English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and HistoryAlden, Raymond MacDonald
General
English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History
Alden, Raymond MacDonald
English language -- Versification; English poetry
Finally, we come back to the question whether we shall use for English
verse the classical terminology which has for so long been applied to
it. Those who object to such terminology do so either on the ground that
it implies that English accented and unaccented syllables are equivalent
respectively to Latin long and short syllables, or on the still more
fundamental ground that there is nothing in our verse which can properly
be called a "foot." It is undoubtedly true that the use of terms based
on quantity has given rise to some confusion when applied to phenomena
based on accent, yet the terms are now understood with as fair a degree
of clearness as any terms relating to so disputed a subject as English
verse; and it seems very doubtful whether it is not easier to explain
them than to introduce new ones. Experiments in the latter direction
have not been very successful. The latest writer on the subject objects,
with considerable severity, to the classical nomenclature "hardly
pressed and barbarously misapplied." Our current prosody, he says later,
"ignores" the frequent occurrence of an accented syllable at the
beginning of a line of Shakspere's verse, "turning it off with the
statement that 'a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse.'" Yet when we
reach the summary of the author's discussion of the subject, we find the
same phenomenon "turned off" with this statement: "In rising rhythm a
thought-moment may begin with a falling wave-group." One cannot avoid
querying whether this interesting combination of words conveys any
simpler and better idea to the normal English reader than the familiar
statement that "a trochaic foot may begin an iambic verse." The case is
instructive as to the danger of attempting a new terminology where one
is already established, and of imagining that one has thereby made the
discussion of the subject more scientific.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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