Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms
From language to metrics and beyond
Editors
Metrics is often defined as a discipline that concerns itself with the study of meters. In this volume the term is used in a broader sense that more or less coincides with the traditional notion of “versification”. Understood this way, metrics is an eminently complex object that displays variation over time and in space, that concerns forms of a great variety and with different statuses (meters, rhymes, stanzas, prescribed forms, syllabification rules, nursery rhymes, slogans, musical textsetting, ablaut reduplication etc.), and that as a cultural manifestation is performed in a variety of ways (sung, chanted, spoken, read) that can have direct consequences on how it is structured. This profusion of forms is thought to correspond, at the level of perception, to a limited number of cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and to represent regularly iterating forms. This volume proposes a relatively coherent overall vision by distinguishing four main families of metrical forms, each clearly independent of the others and amenable to separate typologies.
[Language Faculty and Beyond, 2] 2009. xiv, 428 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Contributors | pp. vii–xii
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Acknowledgments | pp. xiii–xiv
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Introduction: Proposals for metrical typologyJean-Louis Aroui | pp. 1–40
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Part I. Isochronous metrics
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Textsetting as constraint conflictBruce Hayes | pp. 43–62
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Comparing musical textsetting in French and in English songsFrancois Dell and John Halle | pp. 63–78
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Bavarian Zwiefache: Investigating the interface between rhythm, metrics and songPatrizia Noel Aziz Hanna and Robert Vetterle | pp. 79–100
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Natural Versification in French and German counting-out rhymesAndreas Dufter and Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna | pp. 101–122
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Minimal chronometric forms: On the durational metrics of 2-2-stroke groupsBenoît de Cornulier | pp. 123–142
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Symmetry and children’s poetry in sign languagesMarion Blondel and Christopher Miller | pp. 143–164
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Part II. Prosodic metrics
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Pairs and triplets: A theory of metrical verseNigel Fabb and Morris Halle | pp. 167–192
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Generative linguistics and Arabic metricsBruno Paoli | pp. 193–208
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On the meter of Middle English alliterative verseDonka Minkova | pp. 209–228
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The Russian Auden and the Russianness of Auden: Meaning and form in a translation by BrodskyNila Friedberg | pp. 229–246
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Towards a universal definition of the caesuraMarc Dominicy and Mihai Nasta | pp. 247–266
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Metrical alignmentKristin Hanson | pp. 267–286
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Rephrasing line-end restrictionsCarlos Piera | pp. 287–304
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Part III. Para-metrical phenomena
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Pif paf poof: Ablaut reduplication in children’s counting-out rhymesAndy Arleo | pp. 307–324
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The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versificationOreste Floquet | pp. 325–334
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Part IV. Macrostructural metrics
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Convention and parody in the rhyming of Tristan CorbièreDominique Billy | pp. 337–354
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The metrics of Sephardic songJosé Domínguez Caparrós | pp. 355–370
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A rule of metrical uniformity in old Hungarian poetryIván Horváth | pp. 371–384
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Metrical structure of the European sonnetJean-Louis Aroui | pp. 385–402
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Persons index | pp. 403–410
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Languages index | pp. 411–414
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Subjects index | pp. 415–428
“The authors and editors of this book [...] hold that, in terms of how people perceive verse, there are but a limited number of cognitive patterns. Their book represents an attempt to open up discussion of versification along such lines. It aims at "getting the debate off the ground" in the words of Aroui, one of the two co-editors, rather than "proposing a unified and rigorously falsifiable theory", but nevertheless, despite this understandable admission, the present work is one of the most important books on poetic metre published in the past few years.”
Jonathan Roper, University of Tartu, Estonia, in Folklore 122, August 2011
“The diversity of the field of metrics requires people to define their categories, and make them comparable with the work of others. With its content divided into motivated thematic sections, this volume should help in achieving just that. This is a truly good thing.”
Tomas Riad, Stockholm University
“There are very few books of high quality in the field of metrical study, and even fewer which bring together leading experts focusing on specific problems of verse-form; this wide-ranging volume is therefore to be warmly welcomed.”
Derek Attridge, University of York
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Zhan, Bo
2023. Problems with universal metrics. International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 10:2 ► pp. 220 ff.
RYAN, KEVIN M.
Noel Aziz Hanna, Patrizia
Temperley, Nicholas & David Temperley
Attridge, Derek
Aroui, Jean-Louis
2007.
B. Elan Dresner et Nila Friedberg, dir. Formal approaches to poetry : Recent developments in metrics. In the series Phonology and Phonetics
11. Berlin/New York : Mouton de Gruyter. 2006. Pp. viii + 314. 132,30 $ US (relié).. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 52:3 ► pp. 313 ff.
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFH: Phonetics, phonology
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General