UNIT 2 A PRELUDE TO THE STUDY OF POETRY

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
The Reading of Literature
2.2.1 Writing and Reading as Histrorical Acts
2.2.2 The Subjectivity of a Work of Art
2.2.3 The Specular Moment of Literature
2.2.4 From the Writer's Text to the Reader's Work
Versification: The Grammar of Poetry
2.3.1 Prosody,Metre, Scansion
(a) Prosody
(b) Metre and Metries
(c) Scansion
Types of Metres
2.4.1 Syllable-stress or accented syllabic metres
i) The iambic metre
ii) The trochaic metre
iii) The anapaestic metre
iv) The dactylic metre
v) The amphibrachic metre
2.4.2 Strong-stress metres
2.4.3 Syllabic metres
2.4.4 Quantitative metres
Rhyme and Rhythm in Poetry
2.5.1 Rhyme and Rhymeschemes
2.5.2 Rhythm
Analysis of a poem
Let's sum up
A Brief Annotated Bibliography
Answers to exercises

After going through this unit you will be able to appreciate any work of literary art
3
better, specially a poem. To split it into more concrete terms:

0 you will be able to speak about the abstract entity that is a poem - in other words
the ontology of a poem;
L '
speak on the acoustic aspects of a poem such as metre, rhyme, and rhythm. And
finally;
you will complete the task of appreciation by bringing together the capacities
developed in the previous and the present unit.

With this theoretical background you will be better.equipped to study'this course.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

The function of this unit is, in a way to complete the task we had set for ourselves in
the previous unit, i.e. preparing you mentally, equipping you technically and
Orietttationfor the providing you with a perspective for the study of this M.A. English programme in
Strrtiy of Poetry general and this course on British Poetry in particular.

This course on literature, perhaps like any other course on literature, seeks to educate
you affectively, improve your ability for appreciation, give you better insigllts into
the ways literary artists, especially the poets, communicate.

In Unit1 we adopted the method of commenting upon two portraits. They are
examples of visual art and perhaps made communication more convenient. In this
unit we go a little deeper. In talking about a poem you talk about the images and
metaphor .; synlboLt. and icon ;,emblem and exemplum that have a visilal appeal
though in an abstract manner.

There is a still more subtle and deep level which is the rhythm. This is a product of
metre and rhyme and of many other effects which perhaps even the poets are not
always conscious. The entire sound effect or prosody of a poem is a common s o u n d
of the society, the individual and the language. We will exanline some of the
fundamental ideas in prosody in the third, fourtl~and fifth sections. These sections of
this unit would require drilling as you do in mathematics. It will require just a little
attention and practice so you may study especially 2.3 and 2.4 independently of other
sections if you so wish.

The first section (2.2) is a bit abstract and examines the thing called a poem. It would
be good if you can get a hang of the poem in abstraction. However, don't bother
yourself too much about this section in case you find it vague.

The last major section i.e. 2.6 shows how all your study can be employed in
"deciphering" the text of a poem. You have done this type of work during your
undergraduate days. You may feel that you did not need this section. However, it is
included to bring the discussions in the two introductory units to a conclusion. This is
the shortest of the five major sections and you may go through it before reading other
sections, if you so desire.

However, don't break off at any of the subsections within a section as that may
interrupt the discussion in your mind. Then you may feel muddled.

We have not discussed the poetic fonns such as the lyric, epic, allegory or fable or
the various aspects of figurative language such as simile, metaphors, irony,
hyperbole, or terms of art such as fancy, imagination, gothic, classic, neo-classic,
romantic, pastoral, elegy, satire, pathos, bathos, myth, romance, sensibility, wit and
humour,etc. We expect you to know them or consult a dictionary to find out Inore as
and when they occur in your study of this course.

Although a little time consuming, this unit will enhance yoiu ability to study
literature in general and poetry in particular. You may study this unit for an hour or
two daily over a week or two.

2.2 THE READING OF LITERATURE

Such are the changes in critical attitudes that a poem is no longer to be read as an
inscription on a rock devoid of its origin, context or locale. The poet seen as an
inhabitant of a lonely tower or I'ost in the music of his thought or an inmate of a castle
fieed from the responsibilities of life whose servants could do the living for him
appears today as an unrealistic and posed picture of the poet. The poet is a human
being among other human beings, and speaking to and being spoken to reciprocally.
The language s/he uses is a social artefact and also a tool in politics. Let's recall
 Shakespeare or Yeats or Blake or Kabir or Tulsi. They were'all men spealung to other Prelude to the
men and-women like themselves. Study

We could not agree less with Derrida that 'the institutional or socio-political space of
i literary production.. . does not simply surround works, it affects them in their very
structure.' As students of literature we wish to feel that element of the text on our
I

I pulse. Hence we get interested in the Irishness of Yeats, the julahaness of Kabir, the
atheism of Shelley and the conservativeness of Eliot and Tulsi.

2.2.1 Writing and reading as historical acts

These issues involve us in the historicity of literary products. Talking about the
makeup of the poet, in his 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' ~liot'wrote:

... that the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own
generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of
Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own
country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.

Witl~outthis sense, Eliot opines, no poet can remain a poet beyond his twentyfifth
year. However, it is not just the trad~tionof literature that a good poet embodies, but
also that of politics, science, economy and natural events. To turn from poetic
creations to criticism, in our time Derrida points out that 'Deconstruction calls for a
'highly "historian's" attitude' and admits that of'Grarnrnatology, is a history book
through and through.' ' In his or her experience of writing as such' continues Derrida,
'a writer cannot not be concerned, interested, anxious about the past, that of literature,
history, or philosophy, of culture in general.' Derrida cites two dissimilar cases of
James Joyce and William Faulkner:

What I have just suggested is as valid for Joyce, that immense allegory of
historical memory, as for Faulkner, who doesn't write in such a way that he
gathers together at every sentence, and in several languages at once, the
whole of Western culture.

Dryden in his poetry comments upon contemporary events more frequently than .
Wordworth but for that reason Wordworth's poetry is not less historically situated
than Dryden's or for that matter Shelley's.

2.2.2 The subjectivity of a work. of art

The poet, we have said, is a person living among other And yet his 1 11er
poem is not, for the moment we may say?an objective document such as a theorem of
Euclid or the 'General theory of Relativity ' of Einstein. The poet writes about an
intensely personal experience not only when a Wordsworth is writing his
autobiographical poem such as The Prelude or a Tennyson expressing his grief over
the death of his friend Arthur I-Iallam in ljz Memoriam but also when an Eliot writes
The Waste Land or an Aurobindo Ghose Savitri. So powerful is the nprcissism that it
does not forsake even a philoSopher such as Jacques Derrida. He told Derek Attridge,
w

At the "narcissistic" moment of, "adolescent" identification... this was above

all,the desire to inscribe merely a memory or two. I say "only", though I
already felt it an impossible and endless task. Deep down, there was
something like a lyrical movement toward confidences or confessions.

Dcrrida goes on:

Still today there remains in me an obsessive desire to save in uninterrupted

inscription, in the form of a memory, what happens - or fails to happe~r.What
1 should be tempted to denounce as a lure - i.e., totalization or gathering up -
Orientation for the isntt.this what keeps me going? The idea of an internal polylogue, everything
Stlrdy of Poetry that later, in what I hope was a slightly more refined way, was able to lead
me to Rousseau or to Joyce, was first of all the adolescent dream of keeping a
trace of all the voices which were traversing me - or were aZi12ostdoing so -
and which was to be so precious, unique, both specular and speculative.

Derrida above italicizes ' fails to happen' and ' allnost doing so ' which shows that
literature is not just a simple record of the events of the artist's life but also of his
unfulfilled wishes, his dreams, his desires, that Roland Barthes in The Pleaswe of
theText went even further and called 'neuroses.' 'Thus every writer's motto
reads:'wrote Barthes, ' mad I cannot be, sane I d o not deign to be, izeui-oticIawz'. The
belief in the subjectivity or autobiographical character of all art has been felt with
ever greater intensity since the Romantics. In our own time, ' I want' writes George
Poulet,' 'at all costs to save the subjectivity of literature.'

'Eliot's dictum,' Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation'is directed not upon the
poetry.' has been much abused in English Departments in support of a certain kind of
idleness that obviates any research into the life and times of the poet. 'Poetry ' we
have heard beign echoed so often, ' is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape
froin emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.'
What is forgotten, however, is that, while contradicting Wordsworth, Eliot went on to
qualify his definition in the following words:

But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions

know what it means to want to escape from these things.

In Eliot's theory of poetry as much as in his poetry we observe the impact of his piety
which demands the extinction of personality. 'For knowledge' wrote E.H. Gombrich,
' a well stocked mind, is clearly the key to the practice of interpretation.' In order to
interpret a poem we cannot overemphasize the importance 9f a knowledge of the life
of the poet and the background of his age. 'Man' wrote Emerson,' is explicble by
nothing less than all his history.'

2.2.3 The Specular moment of literature

'He should' however, pointed out Emerson,' see that he can live all history in his own
person.' He advises the student to read history actively and not passively. Emerson
exhorts him:

He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by Kings or
empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the
government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which
history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens and London to himself,
and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have
anything to say to him, he will try the case; if not let them for ever be silent.

What is relevant for us in history is the moment or instance in the present - in the
poet's life, in the reader's life - that the past can throw its floodlight upoil. Otherwise
we say, as it has been said, 'Let the dead past bury its dead' or repeat with Gandhi Ji
in Hind Swaraj that happy is a nation without a history. The necessaly history 1s t
inscribed in ourselves just as the wings of the young pigeon that hatched yesterday
predicted air and the eyes of the human embryo anticipated light. The poet writes
about the present, about the living, not what is dead and discarded. 'The poet's text is
the text of bliss', as Barthes says, 'the text that discomforts, unsettles the reader's
historical, cultural , phychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values,
memories, brings lo a crisis his relation with language'.

Now you may ask what are you to do as a student and critic of literature. How should
you treat history or biography in your own analyses of a poem. History and biography
 have to be reconciled to the interpretation of a new, a specular moment descr~bed111 Prelude to the
the work of art. Derrida opines that histoly is contretemps - a series of unlucky, Study ' .
unfortunate or unexpected events - and its virtue lies in its iterability. In his 'Signature
Event Context' he pointed out that the verb 'iterate' comes fiom the Sansluit root itel'
which.means different,(*). While history is iterable, or repeatable it is not the
same event that is repeated. (Anjali, though a copy of a 16th century Mugllal paniting
is a new act, has a different originary history. It no~zethelessunderlines the value of
the original.) By repetition Derrida points out,

Not that the text is thereby dehistoricized, but historicity is made o r

iterability. There is no history without iterability, and this is also what lets the
traces continue to function in the absence of the general context or soine
elements of the context.

. It is for these reasons that we have to read a poem simultaneously for what is unique
and specular in it and the iteration - in both senses of repetition and difference - of the
historical and general.

2.2.4 From the writer's text to the reader's work

Westein criticsm in the latter half of the twentieth century can be said to have moved
from a poet~csof writing to a poetics of reading. The Sanskrit critical theory
developed theories of Kureclyitr-i Pratiblza and a Bhuvuyitri Prcitibhn - the creative and
appreciative talents. 'Classic criticism' coinplained Roland Barthes in ltncrges Music
T a t , ' has never paid any attention to the reader; for it the writer is the only person in
literature.' For Barthes points out that ' a text is not a line of words releasing a s~ngle
'theological' meaning ( the 'message' of the Author-God ) but a multi-dimensional
space in which a variety of writings, none of them original blend and clash.' Barthes
pointed out at the instability of the text, According to him a text is not isotropic (isos
in Greek means same and troyos manner or disposition). The edges and the seams are
unpredictable he tells us. 'In the man, could we lay hi111 open' opined Emerson, 'we
should see the reason for his last flourish and tendril of his work; as every spine and
tint in the sea-shell pre-exist in the secreting organs of the fish'. However reassuring
Emerson may sound it appears today as an elusive goal; nonetl~elessa desirable one.

So after Derrida we talk about archaeological criticism that goes at the writer's text,
to the sources of experience both unique and not-unique at the same time. In this
sense the text is open. We have just a trace of the author's meaning in his text which
can be supplemented by the author's other works both written and unwritten and all
other texts of all other authors, the t.v. progranlmes, newspaper reports etc, to which
the author responds,

The reader, however, delimits the open ended text of the author. S/I-Tc imposes upon
it the status of a work. He interprets, analyses, examines and evaluates and arrivcs at
a definite meaning which we call,eschatological criticism after Derrida. Eschatology
from the Greek ' doctrine of last things' is usually applied to death and the last
judgement. Thus the reader's work has a stable meaning. This criticis~llcan be called
in Barthes' words 'a mere parasite of the story being narrated.'

-
Self Check Exercise I

1. Write in about 60 of your own words on the relevance of the reader to a work
, of art.
Orientationfor the
Study ofpoetry

1
- I
1
2. If your friend tells you that a poem is made of words how would you respond 1
to him / her?
. I
I

,
@

2.3 VERSIFICATION: THE GRAMMAR OW POETRY. P

In one his last poems written in 1,938called 'The Statues' the Irish poet W.B. Yeats .
(1865-1939) marvelled at 'The lineaments of a plummet measured face'. As you :

h o w masons work with plummets which is a plumb or ball of lead attached to a .

string for testing perpendicularity of wall, etc. And yet the 'plummet measured face'
has its distinctive'features or lineaments. Earlier on in the poem Yeats had written:

... for the men

That with a mallet or a chisel modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias.
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking-glass.
/'I

Salamis, which you may locate on a map of Greece, was the site of the rout in 480
B.C. of Xerxes (485-465 B.C.)- the son of Darius, the Persian King (521-485 B.C.) -
by the Greeks. According to Herodotus (5thB.C.) the Greek historian who had
participated in the war and left an account of it, the armies of the Persians were
fantastic; their might unchallenged. However they were defeated by the cooperation
of Athens and Sparta . Salamis is seen here as a- symbol of the victory of
 mathematics, calculation, number over 'vague immensities' and the proverbeal Prelude to the
Asiatic grandeur. We are reminded of the sea battle at Salamis by the 'many headed Study
foam' in the sixth line of the quotation above. In the same line Yeats cui~ninglyslips
in the name of Phidias, who was perhaps the greatest artist of ancient Europe. His
colossal statue of Zeus at Olympia in the south-east of Acropolis wrought in ivory
and gold over a core of wood was the most famous statue of antiquity. He had also
contributed three statues of Athene on Acropolis. One of thein was wrought in ivory
and gold. He had also probably designed and certainly supervised the construction of
the frieze of Parthenon. Yeats perhaps wants to tell us that it was Phidias' ai-tistry, 11is
life-like creations, products of calculation and measurement nonetheless that set high
standards for the society of Pericles ( 492-429 B.C. ).

We may, may not or only partially agree with Yeats's observations above on 'Asiatic
vague immensities ' but we cannot deny that pieces of art, or any*workin politics or
warfare for that matter, are human contrivances of planning with the help of cold
concrete facts - be they words, or colours or rocks and mortar or people and locations.

A student who wishes to learn poetry properly must learn the basics of metre
especially if s h e wishes to appreciate the poetry in a foreign language. With
'
reference to the study of ancient Greek and Latin literature by English students Eliot
opined:

We have to learn a dead language by an artificial method, and our methods of

teaching have to be applied to pupils most of whom have only a moderate gift
for language. '

While delivering his W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture (1942) at Glasgow Eliot went even
further and emphasised the study of English metre even for the native English
speaker:

Even in approaching the poetry of our own language, we may find the
classification of metres; of lines with different numbers of syllables and
stresses in different places, useful at a preliminary stage, as a simplified map
of a complicated territory: but it is only the study not of poetry but of poems,
that can train our ear.

What Eliot says after the colon gives the impression that if you know the technique
some day inspiration would descend and give your verse the life that is poetry. The
'soul of rhythm' Sri Aurobindo ( whose writings you are going to rend in another
course ) wrote 'can only be fouild by listening in to what is behind the music of
words and sound and things'. He admitted, that the 'intellectual knowledge of
technique helps... provided one does not make of it a inere device or a rigid fetter'
Aurobindo appears to be in agreement with Eliot but they appear on the surface to
place their emphases a little differently. Aurobindo points out:
I .
Attention to technique harms only when a writel- is so busy with it that lie
becomes ihdifferent to substance. But if the substance is adequate, the
attention to technique can only give it greater beauty.
.
'It is in my view' Aurobindo went on,
-
a serious error to regard metre or rhyme as artificial elements, mere external
. and superfluous equipment restraining the movement and sincerity of poetic
form. Metre, on the cotltrary, is the most natura1,mould of expression for
certain states of creative emotion and vision, it ii much more natural and
spontaneous than a non-metrical firm; the emotion expresses itself best and
.' most powerfully in a balanced rather than in a loose and shapeless rhythm.
The search for techni,quesis simply the search for the best and'mosl
 appropriate form for expressing what has to be said and once it is found, the
01.isatrrtionfor tlrc inspiration can flow quite naturally and fluently into it.
Slririy of Poetry , ,

In different words though, Eliot and Aurobindo appear to be in agreement about the
place and utility of the knowledge of versification in the writing and, by extension for
us, the study of poetry in English.

2.3.1 Prosody, Metre, Scansioli

(a) Prosody : That part of grammar which deals with laws governing the
structure of verse is caIled prosody. It encompasses the study of all the
eIen~entsof language that contribute towards acoustic or rhythmic effects,
chiefly in poetry but also in prose. Ezra Pound called Prosody "the
articulation of the total sound of a poem". However, we h o w that alliteration
( the rhythmic repetition of consonants ) and assonance ( repetition of voweI
sounds ) occur as much in prose as in poetry. Besides assonance and
alliteration rhythmic effects are produced in poeby as well as in prose by the
repetition of syntactical and grammatical patterns, However, compared with
even the simplest verse, the "prosodic" structure of prose would appear
haphazard and unconsidered.

(b) Metre and Metrics : Metre measures the rhythm of a line of verse. The word
inetre derives fi-oin the Greek word nzelron which means 'measure'.
Traditionally metre refers to the regular, recurrence of feet. According to the
Hungarian-American linguist John Lotz ( b. 1913), 'In some languages there
are texts in whicli the phonetic material within certain syntactic frames, such
as sentence, phrase, word, is numerically regulated. Such a text is called
verse, and its distinctive characteristics meter. Metrics is the study of meter.
A nonmetric text is called prose.' In the words of Seymour Chatman (b.1928)
'Meter might be defined as a systematic convention whereby certain aspects
of phonology are organised for aesthetic purposes. In order to find out where
the accent falls we scan a line.' 'Like any conventicn' Chatman goes on, 'it is
susceptible of individual variation which could be called styIistic, taking
"style" in the coimmon meaning of "idiosyncratic way of doing something ' M

(c) Scansion : In general parlance, to scan is to look intently at all parts

successively. Radars cause particular regions to be traversed by a controlled
beam. In prosody scansion refers to metrical scanning of verse. When a unit
of verse - a foot, a line or a stanza - is scanned with the help of symbol's the
inetre can be seen as well as heard.

We make use of a few syinbols in order to scan a passage in verse '( and sometimes
also in the case of prose ). The symbols are shown below:

Symbol Name of the symbol Purpose

1 The acute accent Metrically stressed syllable

u The breve Metrically weak syllable
I A single line Division between feet
I1 A double line Caesura or pause in the line
A A rest , A syllable metrically
expected but not actually
present.
I .
 2.4 TYPES OF METRES %LhAde b ma
Study

There are basically four types of metres. They are:

I. Syllable - stress or accented syllabic metres
ii. Strong - stress metres
iii. Syllabic metres
iv. Quantitative metres
We will now discuss each one of them one by one.

2.4.1 Syllable-stress or accented syllabic metres

"
The smallest unit of meter in poetry is a foot. A foot in'prosody is a pattern of
phonetically stressed and unstressed syllables. The four principal feet foand in
English verse are illustrated below:

(a) iambic
(b) trochee
l u I* / /
t~ger,holy, upp&, g-randexr
/ * / u., /
(c) anapaest Gdsstand, czllonade, reappear
1" / Y w t b 4 .f v
(d) dactyl desperae, messenger, property, lnfamoxs

Besides, the four major feet the spondee (") and the pyrrhus ( u u ) also occur as
substitutions in a passage of verse. Some theorists also admit the amphibrach ( u l u ) ,
amphimacer ( 1 u / ) and trlbrach ( u u u ) into their scansion. However, these are
rather uncommon in English poetry.

Syllable stress metres got established in English in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer
(1340?-1400). After him, for about two centuries the syllable-stress metre fell into
disuse or was misunderstood. It was only towards the end of the 1Gth century that the
syllable-stress metres got re-established.

Now we will scan a passage of each major metrical type and then leave a few stanzas
unscanned for you to scan. After having scanned them with apencil you may
compare your scansion with those scanned a\ the end of the unit.

( i ) The Iambic metre :

/
T K ~mon/a?ch I
hears
I
A ~ s L e /s th;: God
' d / u /
Affects / to nod. ,

/ I
AZd selms / tg shake / th; spheres. Dryden.

Comments: The five line stanza above i s in iambic dimeter ( two feet ). However, the
concluding line is iiiambic trimeter. .The rhyme scheme is a b b a,

Self-check Exercise 1

Now you may scan the following passages and comment briefly on the metrical
features:
Orientation.fpr the Passage 1: In woods a ranger
Study of Poelty
To joy a stranger

. Comments :

2: Thy way not mine, 0 Lord

However dark it be;

~ e a d ' m wit11
e thine own hand

choose out the path for me.

Comments :

3: The way was long, the wind was cold,

The minstrel was infinn and old;

The harp, 11is sole remaining joy,

Was carried by an orphan boy,

Confusion shame remorse despair,

At once his bosom swell

The damps of death bedewed his brow,

a I

He shook, he groaned, 11e fell.

Comments : . I

5: I put my hat upon my head =.

And walked into the Strand,

 And there I met another man Prelude to the
Study
Whose hat was in his hand.

Comments

The passages above, you must have noticed, are clumsily regular. They may qualify
as passable verse but don't have the power to move us as poetry does.

By far the most cominon measure of English poetry is the iambic pentameter. It is
generally found in two distinct ltinds - the unrhymed variety called blank verse and
the rhymed variety heroic couplet.

As epics concentrated on a typical hero such as Achilles and Aeneas they were
generally called heroic poems. Dryden and Pope translated Virgil (70-19 B.C.) and
Homer (9"' Century B.C) respectively in the rhyming couplet. It became the dominant
metre of late seventeenth and eighteenth century poehy. Hence the metre began to get
called "heroic". The Restoration playwrights in trying to transfer epic gsandeur to
their stiige made their characters speak in heroic couplet. The effect, llowever, was
grandiose rather than grand. The heroic cou~pletreached perfection in the hands of
Alexander Pope. Below we scan four lines from his Essay on Criticisnz (1711) :
1." / / v l
~ h yA
n l p . . strives1 soke rock's1 vzst weight/ to throw,
cr /
move slow;
1
Not SO,//wh&
/. b / U /
swift1cainillla scours1 thVe plain
/

u ' ,. / /
Flies o'er1 tfi, unbend/iG c6m1 azd ssklrnsi tlZ miin.

The lines above are in regular iambic pentameter except the sixth which is an
hexameter. An iambic hexameter line is also called an alexandrine. 111 the second
foot of the fourth line we notice an elision i.e. omission of a syllable in pronunciation.
Thomas Norton (1532-84) and Thomas Sackville used blalzlc verse for the first time in
their play Gorboduc (1561). Below is a specimen from the play:

The royal king and eke his sons are slain;

No ruler rests within the regal seat;
The heir, to whom the scepter ' longs, unknown
. Lo, Britain's realm is left an open prey,
A present spoil for conquest to ensue.
- The regimented uniformity of the iambic pentilnleter lines above coi~~municalcs
monotony and as poetiy it is lifeless.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), about whom you would read in the course on Brifislr
Drhma (MEG 02), changed all this by vaiying the accents, introducing the'medid
pause (called caeslira) and allowing the sense to flow into a freer se~ltellcestructure.
Here is an example fsom Doctor Fnustus ( 1604 ) :
I & /
WEthis/ / / - /
the face1 th%tlaunched 1 a thonslan*d ships,
- " I I
~ : d burnt! the toplle% tosverlo~1111um
/u/
I?
 Orientation for rhe k C
Sw et H len,, rngke k e l i"mrnd$id"i/Yko$'kCs,
I

Study of Poetry . / u 1
I
HF~lips/ s$k f o ! t my
~ sdul;l s&whlre/ it flies !
/' /
-
u U / ' " / V /
Come; Helen,/ come, glve me/ my soul/ again.
, / 1 / ".U.W
1 ;re will/ I dwell1 for healven is/ m these lips,
4
.

And
( a 11is
v dross/ that
U is/
/ "not
$ Uellena.
/

You would notice that the passage above is dominated by blank verse i.e unrhymed
iambic pentameter. However, the third and fifth lines are tetrameter lines. Whereas
the first foot of the third line is a spondee, there is an anapaestic variation in the last
foot. With the help of an extra unstressed syllable before "Kiss" Marlowe succeeds in -
cominunicating, as it were, Faustus's .longing for Helen.

Marlowe intoduces the fifth line with a trochaic inversion. This is succeeded by an
amphimacer.However, you would notice that while there are metrical variations in
the two lines, the number of accented syllables remain uniformly five in each line of
the passage. Marlowe thus achieves a felicity of expression by adopting a unique
rhythm apposite for the character and his stuation in the play but without
contravening the natural rhythm of the English language.

Even more flexibility was introduced into English poetry by Shakespeare. You may
scan one of his sonnets or some of the passages you like in his plays you will read on
the British Drama WEG 02) course.

Self-check Exercise III :

Now you may scan a couple of passages from Shakespeare and Keats and write your
comments on them in the space provided:

(a) Two truths are told,

As haplpy protlogues to / the swell/ing act

Of the imperial theme. I thank you, gentlemen. r

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good; if ill,

Why hath it given me eamest of success,

Commencing in a truth ? I am Thane of Cawdor.

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair.

And make my seated heart h o c k at my ribs Shakespeare: Muchetlt

 rreluur ru LUG

Study

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and Kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Appolo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told ,

hat 'deep browed Homer ruled as his demesne

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

I

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific, and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise

Silent upon a peak in Darien. John Keats.

I
 Orientation for the
Study ofpoetry
I

In the examples above you noticed that two measurements are involved in metre: we
have to speak about the kind of foot and the number of feet. You scanned passages
in the iambic metre in two feet or dimeter, three feet or trimeter, four feet or
tetrameter, five feet or pentameter, six feet or hexameter and seven feet or
septameter. You noticed that the septameter verse ofien divided into lines of
tetrameter alternating with trimeter. It has been estimated that ninety per cent of
English poetry is in the iambic pentameter. Now we will examine a few examples of
the trochee, anapaest and dactyl also.

( ii ) The Trochaic Metre :

el ow we scan a stanza in trochaic teframeter:

1 /
May thgd mdnth E/rdsj/ beau6,

6 t u 1" L
M nth w h h pleasure/ is d duty, I
d W t /
M nth of7 bees a& month tiflowers,
/"
t /"
Month a/blossom/ laden/ bowers.
/ C , / u

Do the drill below in order to find how well you have understood the trochaic metre.

Self-check Exercise IV

(a) Dreadful gleams,

Dismal screams,

Fires that glow,

Shrieks of woe,

Sullen moans,

Hollow groans. A.Pope

 Prelude to the
Study

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure. J. Dryden

When the British warrior queen

Bleeding from "'-c; ?oman rods,

Sought w;!h an indignant mien

Counsel of her country's gods.

Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream;

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem .A. W. Longfellow

.(e> All that walk on foot or ride in chariots

All that dwell in palaces or garrets

(0 . On a mountain stretched beneath a hoary willow '

Lay a shepherd swain and viewed the rolling billow.

I
r~ Above you scanned passages of trochaic mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, and
j hexameters. However, I may remind you that in good poetry you do not find long
8 .stretches in the trochaic metre. The iambus and trochee are bisyllabic feet. Now let us
8
Orbrtation for the examine the ariapaest and dactyl which are trisyllabic feet i.e.; they are made of three..
Study' of Poetry syllables.

(iii) The anapaestic metre.

Below is scanned a passage in anapaestic trimeter: ' 1

-u / .a {."
I am monlarch $a 11I survey,
/

" u IC~I
I am
U Y / I
of the b~rdlagd tge brute

You will notice above that the first foot of the second line is an iainbus. Verses in the
anapaestic metre often have iambic substitution. Now you inay do the following self-
check exercise.

Self-check Exercise V

(a> How fleet is the glance of the mind

Compared with the speed of its flight !

The tempest itself lags behind

And the swift winged arrows of light

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corpse to the tamparts we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,

O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

(4 I am out of humanity's reach, Prelude to the
Study
I must finish my journey alone.

he couple of lines are in anapaestic trimeter. However, the first foot is an iambic
substitution.

(iv) The dacylic metre

It helps to recall a trochee a the converse of qn iambus, and the dactyl as the opposite
of an anapaest. Below we scan a passslpp in dactylic dimeter.

'rouch her not scornfully

Think of her mournfully.

Gently and humanly;

Not of the remains of her

Now is pure womanly.

The passage above is in dactylic dimeter. The rhymescheme is a a a b a. Now do the

following exercise.
Self-check Exercise M
Scan the following and then briefly comment on the scansion.

(a) One more unfortunate

Weary of breath

Rashly importunate

Gone to her death!

Take her up tendenly;

Lift her with care;

Fashion'd so slenderly young and so fair!

(b) Merrily merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Orie~rtntion
for the
Study of Poetry Above you have learnt to scan passages in the four dominant feet of English ie; the
iambus, trochce, anapaest and dactyl.

(v) The amphibrachic metre

In a word such as eternal you notice that the emphasis falls on the middle syllable.
'Eternal' thus is in the amphibrachic foot. Let's scan a line in the amphibrachic metre.
t.4 I 0 10 ' /
0 hush th&l my babiel thvy sire w;s/
/
knight.
,

You may have noticed that the last foot is an iambus.

Self - Check Exercise VII

Scan the following passage and then comment on your scansion:

(a) Most friendship is feigning

Most friendship mere folly.

Compare your scansion with the passage scanned for your under 2.9.

Above you have an outline of the "traditional" English metres. These were
established by the Renaissance theorists who tried to subject the vernacular English
forms to the rules of classical prosody. Let us now turn to examine three other forms
of metres. I

2.4.2 Strong-stress metres

Antecedent to the syllable-stress metres was the strong-stress metre of Old and
I
Middle English poetry. The strong-stress metres for that reason are often called the
"native" metres and they are indigenous to the Germanic languages ( such as German,
English, Dutch, Swedish, etc. ). In strong-stress verse there are a fixed number of
stresses in each line. The unstressed syllables may, however, vary considerably. The
use of strong-stress metre can be seen in the Old English epic poem Beowtllf'( C.
1000 ) and in William Langland's vision poem, Piers Plowman. Below you have the
opening four lines from the latter :
f 1 / I
In a somer sesun I1 whon softe, was the sonne
I 1 /' /
I
I schop me in-to a schroud I1 a scheep as I were;
/ of wlrkes
In hlbite of an hkrmite // un-holy
I ' d /
Wende I wydene in this world // w ndres to here.

You would notice in the four lines above that each line divides into a medial pause
(11) or caesura. On both sides of the caesura there are two stressed syllables. The
passage is also marked by alliteration.

With the rise of French literature in England in the 12th and 13th centuries rhyme
replaced alliteration and stanzaic forms replaced the four-stress line. However, the
strong-stress rhythm was too strong to be abandoned completely and it can be felt In
the love lyrics and popular ballads of the 14th and 15th centuries. If you scar1 ' Lord
Randall ' you will find a mixture of the iambus and the anapaest of the "traditional" Prelude to the
metre along with the four stresses divided equally on two sides of the caesura. Study
/
0 wh&e ha you been I/ Lord Randall, my sbn ?
t

/ ha you b en 11 my
And wIere C f ?
young man

1 /
I my bed soon,
I ha be n at the grkenwood ; /I mother, rnak
d / wad lie d wn.
/ . wi h ntin, /I and fain
For I'am wearied 6
Today the strong-stress survives in nursery rhymes and songs:
/ I I /
Jack and Jill 11 went up the hill,
I / /
To fetch a pale // of water,
/ /
Jack, fell down, and 11 broke his crown
/ /
/ / /
And Jill N came tumbling after.

Above there is an alternation of four and three stresses in alternate lines. However,
there'is more regularity in most of the nursery rhymes:
I / I
One, two 11 buckle my shoe:
I I / /
Three, four N knock at the door;

Fide, s i i N pilk up sticks;

/

/ I
Seven, eight 11 lay them straight;
/.

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the revival of interest in the strong-stress
metres due to the innovations of Walt Whitrnan (1819-92) in America and Gerard
Manley Hopkins (1844-89) in England. In the 20th century a number of poets,
including Ezra Pound (1885-1972), T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) and W.H. Auden (1907-
73) revived the strong-stress metre. Pound's Pisan Cantos (1 948) and Eliot's Four
Qtrartets ( 1943 ) testify to the energy of the strong-stress metre.

2.4.3 Syllabic Metres

In syllabic metres stresses and pauses vary. The number of syllables in each line,
however, remains fixed. Poetry in Romance lai~guages(languages that have grown
out of Latin, the language of ancient Rome, sucl~as French, Italian and Spanish) is
dominated by the syllabic metres. In English, however, to most ears, the syllable-
count alone does not produce any rhythmic interest.

2.4.4 Quantitative metres

Quantity in the present context refers to the time we take to pronounce a syllable. It is
a product of the duration for which we pronounce the vowel at the nucleus of the
syllable. For instance you can pronounce "sweet rose" in various ways shortening and
lengthening the vowel sound as you please. This variability, however, would hinder
communication between the poet and you as the reader. Now if you compare
Sanskrit, or Hindi for that matter, with English you find that you cannot exercise your
discretion in lengthening or shortening the vowel sound or the quantity of the syllable
in the two Indian languages. They are predetermined by the linguistic system of
Sanskrit and ~ i n d i .
 for flit.
01.ienta~iorz The quantitative metres dominated Greek and Latin poetry because they are highly
0 Stiidy of Poetry inflected. (To inflect a word is to change its form at the end according to its peculiar,
S case, mood, tense and number. For instance we can say that "child" and "boy" inflect
differently in the plural.) The inflection promoted the construct..ionof long, slow-
paced lines because those languages supported the alternation of the long vowels in
the roots and the short ones in the inflections. English which lost most of its
inflections in the 15th centuiy, ulililce German, is less hospitable to the quantitative
metres.

2.5 RHYME AND RHYTHM IN POETRY

You know that verse is generally distinguished from prose as a more compressed and
rcgularly rhythmic form of statement. One of the most important constituents of
rhythm is metre about which you know already. There are, however, other factors
'
such as alliteration (the use of several nearby words or stressed syllables beginnlpg
wlth the same consonant ), assonance ( the repetition of the same or simllar vowel
souilds usually in accented syllables), consonance (the repetition of a pattern of
consonants wlth changes in the intervening vowels such as in linger, longer; Iangzior)
and onamatopoeia ( which is direct verbal imitation ofnatural sounds ) that also
contribute to rhythm. Besides metre on the one hand and alliteration, assonance,
consonance and onamatopoeia on the other, rhyme helps to create rhythm and define
unlts of verse in subtle ways. Let's now examine rhynze and what it does; howevcr,
after you've done a short exercise.

Self -Check Exercise VIE1

Don't scan the following passages. However, identify the use of alliteration,
assonance, or consonance in them and then supply your comments in the space
provided. Having done so compare your a'nswers with those supplied at the end of the
unit.

(a) Ruin hath taught we thus to ruminate

That Time will come and take my love away.
Shakespeare : Sonnet 64

(b) 111pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,

.
r
Before polygamy was made a sin,
Dryden : 'Absalom and Achitophel '

(c) For shade to shade will come too drowsiIy,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
Keats :'Ode or Melancholy'

(d) Not the twilight of the gods but a precise dawn

if sallow and grey bricks, arid the newsboys crying war.
Louis MacNeic~
 Prelude to the
Study

(e) It seemed that out of battle I e s c q e d

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scoooed
Through granites which titanic wars had proine.1 .
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned.
Wilfned Owen : ' Strange Meeting

2.5.1 Rhyme and Rhymeschemes

Rhyme consists generally of identity of sounds at the end of

lines of verse. Now let's read the following lines:

Faith is not built on disquisitions vain ;

The things we must believe are few orplairz.
John Dryden : Religio Laici

Above ' vain ' and ' plain ' are rhyming words. You will notice that both are accented
monosyllabic words. Such a rhyme is called masculine.

When the accented syllable is followed by an unaccented syllable (as in 'hounding'

and 'bounding') the rhyme is called feminine. An example is given below:

Then to come, in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow.

You notice above that ' son-ow ' and ' morrow ' are bisyllabic words and the acoent
falls on the first syllables. You will notice also that there is double rhyme above.

In English triple rhyme is used for comic or satiric purposes, a; Byron does in Don
Juan:

... oh! , ye lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not henpecked vou all ?

Above the last t h e e syllables that have been underlined rhyme.

Sometimes syllables within the same line may rhyme as in the Iast stanza of
Browi~ing's'Confessions' :
Alas,
We loved, sir - used to meet ;
How sad and bad and mad it was -
But then how it was sweet !

The words ' sad ' , ' bad ' and ' mad ' in the passage above rhyme though within the
same line,This is an example of internal rhyme.

When rhymes are only rhymes in appearance and not in sound as in the case of 'alone'
and 'done' or 'remove' and 'love' we have eye rhyme.

Above ( SCE VII1,e ) you read a few lines from Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting'.
The poem furnishes examples of assona~zce.However, Owen called it pararhyme.
Such rhymes are now used for special effects but it was earlier understood as a sign
Orierztatiorr for the of pressing exigency or lack of skill. It was thus called of rlzynte (orpartial,
Stirdy o f Poetry inzyerfect or slarlt rlrynze ).

You have read above that Old English and Old Germanic heroic poetry as well as the
lyrics in O.E. were written in strong-stress metre. With the ascendancy of the
influence of French on English rhymes replaced alliteration and stanzaic forms gave
way to four stress lines of the so called "native" or strong-stress metres.

However, blank verse is unrhymed verse and until the advent of jkee verse it alone
achieved wide popularity in English. Although used by the Earl of Surrey in
translating Virgil's Aeneid blank verse was employed pnmarily in drama. Milton's
Paradise Lost (1667), however, was one of the first epic poems in English lo use it.
In the nineteenth century Wordsworth's The Preltlde (1868- 1869), 'Tennyson's Il!y/l.s
of the King (1 833)and Browning's The Ring aizd the Book (1868-1869) were wrltten ,

in blank verse.

Sometimes stanzaic fonns do not exist in poetry in blank verse as in the case of
Milton's 'Lycidas' (1 637) and Paradise Lost. This is true also of rhymed verse as in
Samuel Johnsons 'London' (1738) and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1 749). The
texts are divided into units of sense as in prose paragraphs and'are thus called verse
paragraph.

The recurring feature of English poetry is, however, a statzza which consists oTa
fixed nuniber of lines and a well defined rhyme scheme. However, it is not so in the
case of Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast' ( which you will read in Block 5 ) which 11as
lines of varying lengths as well as number of lines. Similarly Spenser's Epithul~nrzion
is in the stanzaic form but the stanzas are constituted of lines of varying lengths and
rhymes. In this case stanzaic fornl is reinforced by a refrain i.e. a line repealed at the
end of each stanza.

The simplest form of a stanza is the couplet; that is two lines rhyming together. A
single couplet in isolation is called a distich. When a couplet expresses a complete
thought and ends in a terminal punctuation sign we call it a closed couplet. You have
already read about the heroic couplet.

A traditional form of the couplet is the tetrameter, or four beat couplet: Milton's

'L' Allegro' and Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' are admirable examples of great
poetry in the octosyllabic couplet.

A three rhymed pattern is called a triplet or tercet. Below is an exanlple of it fro111

Dryden's poetry:

Warm'd with more particles of Heav'nly Flame

He wing'd his upward flight, and soar'd to fame:
The rest remained below, a Tribe without a Name.

Three lines with one set of rhyming words can be found also in Tennyson's ''rile
Eagle'. This is, however, not very common in English and is generally used to give
variety to a poem in the rhyming couplet. However, the rhymes are so~neti~nes linked
from verse to verse and may run as aba - bcb - cdc - ded - and so on. This form of
triplet is called terza rima. It is borrowed from Italian and was employed by Dante '
(1265-1321) in his Divine Comedy. The finest example of it in English is Shelley's
"Ode to the West Wind" which, however, ends in a couplet.

Quatrains are stanzas of four lines. Above you read about the ballad stanza in which
tetrameter and trimeter lines alternate. A variety of rhyme schemes have been
observed in quatrains: a b a b ( in which lines rhyme alternately); a b c b ( in which
the second and fourth lines only rhyme).
 I
I I
I
Dryden ( in Annus Mirabilis ) and Gray ( Elegy Written in a Country Clzurchyard ) in Prelude to the 1
the eighteenth century employed five stress iambic lines that rhyme alternately. In the Study I
nineteenth century Tennyson used tetrameter quatrains rhyming a b b a in In I,
Memoriam and FitzGerald used pentameter quatrains that rhyme a a b a in his
translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
I
There are, however, stanzas of five, six, seven and eight lines which are too
numerous to be differentiated. Ilere we will discuss some of the "named varieties"

(a) Rhyme royal was used by Chaucer for the first time in English in Troilus and
Criseide (c. 1385188) and then by Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucvece (1594). The
rhyme scheme of a seven line stanza in rhyme royal is a b a b b c c. It looks as if a
quatrain has been dovetailed onto two couplets.

(b) Ottava rima was introduced in England by Wyatt in the sixteenth century. The
premier example of this verse form is Byron's Don Juan . The rhyme scheme of the
eight line stanza is a b a b a b c c. You will notice that an extra a rhyme has been
intoduced in the rhyme royal scheme. The single couplet at the end of the stanza
gives a witty verbal snap to the foregoing section.

(c) The Spenserian stanza like the preceding two stanza forms discussed above has
iambic pentameter lines. However, the last line is an Alexandrine. Edmund Spenser
devised it for Tlze Faerie Queene. In the nineteenth century Keats employed it
brilliantly for Eve of St. Agnes and Shelley for Adonais. The nine lines rhyme a.b a b
b c b c c. You notice that the b sound recurs 4 times and c three. The pattern is
intricate and poems in this stanza form are slow-moving.

(d) The Sonnet was originally a stanza'uskd by the Sicilyan school &cburt poets in
the thirteenth century. Frpm there it went to Tuscany where it reached its highest . ,

expression in the poetryof Petrarch ( 1304 - 74 ). He wrote'314 sonnets idealizing his

beloved aura.
In England it was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47) dnd Sir Thomas Wyatt '
(1503 - 42 ) who experimented with the sonnet form and gave it the structure that
Shakespeare used and made famorls. Since then the sonnet has prbved itskf to be one
of the most.versatile of the poetic forms. It was used in recent years by ~ i k r a mSetb
in his novel The Golden Gate. Long pbems composed of a series of sonnets are called
sonnet sequence. Poets such as Edmund Spenset, Sir Philip Sidney, Michael I,

Drayton, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barret Browning, D.G. Rossetti, .W.H.

Auden; Conrad Aiken and Rainer Maria Rilke have grouped together sonnets dealing
with a particular lady or situation. However, the degree in which they are
autobiographical or tell a coherent story is a matter on which opinions diverge.

. The sonnet today is defined as a lyric of fourteen lines in the iambic pentameter form.
However, originally it was a stanza in the Italian. There have been sonnets in the
hexameter as for instance the first of Sidney's Astleoplzil and Stella and Milton's ' On
the New Forces of-Conscience', which is in twenty lines. Most of the sonnets,
however, fall into two or three categories - the Pentrarchan, Shakespearean and
Spenserian.

The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts of eight andsix lines each called the
octave and the sestet. Originally the sonneteer set ,forth a problem in the octave and
resolved it in the sestet. However, Milton did not follow the convention nor did he
use it as a medium for the expression of his amorous inclinations as Petrarch had
done before him. Wordsworth and Keats both wrote Petrarchan sonnets. A Petrarchan
sonnet follows the rhyme scheme abba abba in the octave. In the sestet two or three
rhymes may be employed such as cdc cdc or cde cde.
Orieiztntioiarzfor tlte . The Shakespearean sorlnet is usually divided into three quatrains to be followed by
Strr@ of Poetry a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet: is abab cdcd efef
gg.

A Sper~seriansonnet is also divided into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

However, there are fewer rhymes in a Spenserian sonnet than in the Shakesperean
The fonner follows the following rhyme scheme :
abab bcbc cdcd ee.

Above we have discussed rhymes and the various types of rhynle schemes elnployed
by poets writing in English. Now let us examine the function of rhythm in poetry.

2.5.2 Rhythm.

Rhythm is to borrow Plato's words, 'an order of n~ovement'in time. We generally

speak of rhythm in connection with poehy or music. I-Iowever, you must have heard
people talking of the rhythms of nature or even biological rhythm. -Perhaps periodic
repetition of a certain pattern is the sine qua non of rhythm. All the arts-painting,
sculpture, and architecture - have their rhythm. Here, however, we will talk of rhythim
in the context of poetry only. Above you studied about a variety of acoustic effects in
poetry such as metre, rhyme, alliteration, onamatopoeia, etc. They contribute to the
rhythm of a poem. Prosody which taltes into account the historical period to which a
poem belongs, the poetic genre and the specificities of a poet's style goes closer to
the rhythmic aspect of a poem.

For instance, quantity ( or vowel length ) is a rhylhmic but not a metrical feature of
English poetry. This is because English does not impose any strict regularity in
quantity as it does with respect to stress. For example in 'sweet rose' the vowel
sounds can be lengthened or shortened at will. This cannot be done i c many Indian
131lguages.However, the lengthening and shortening of the vowel sound does affect
the rhythm of the poem. Similarly, the*riseand fall in the h~rinanvoice. especially in
reading poetry which is called cadence is a rhythmic not a metrical feature. Many
other factors contribute to the rhythm of a piece of verse or prose. Grammatical
features are some of these.

Roinan Jakobson drew our attention to grammatical features in poetry. He compared

the role of pure grammatical parallelism in poetry to geometrical features in painting.
'For the figurative arts' he wrote, 'geometrical principles represent a "beautiful
necessity" ...' and went on to add, 'It is the same necessity that in language marlts out
the grammatical meanings.' In his 'Yeats' "Sorrow of Love" through the Years'
written along with Stephen Rudy they drew attention to Yeats's predilection for "art
that is not mere story - telling". They went on:

According to Yeats, "the arts have already become full of pattein and rhythn~.
Subject pictures no longer interest us." In this context he refers precisely to
Degas, in Yeats' opinion an artist whose excessive and obstinate desire to
'picture' life - "and life at its most vivid and vigorous" - had hanned his work. c * I

Jaltobson and Rudy go further and point out,

T11e poet's emphasis on pattern reminds one of Benjamin Lee WhorE the
penetrating lingiust who realized that 'the patternment' aspect of language
always overrides and controls the 'lexation' or name-giving aspect," and an
inquiry into the role of "pattern" in Yeats' own poetry becomes particularly
attractive, especially when one is confronted with his constant and careful
nlodification of his own works.

Thc two authors go on and draw attention to Yeats' epigraph to his Chllecteti Work\
irr V(v:rc ( J I I C ! Prase whic11 re?+\.
 The fi-iends that have it I do wrong PreIude to the
When eves I remake a song, Study
Should l a o w what issue is at stale:
It is n~yselfthat I remake.

In the course of his revisions, the patternings, Yeats claimed not just to be improving
his poems lexationally but pattern-wise, rhythm-wise which he equated wit11
remaking himself under the influence of some much more deep and subtle truth
which we can apprehend if at-all only transiently.

If we scan a couple of sonnets of Shakespeare and compare their rhythnl we can

appreciate its role in a poet's style. Let's first scan two sonnets of Shaltespcare -
sonnets 71 and 116. They are given below:

( Sonnet. 7 1 )
Y / 1 " / C ) / / V "//I /
Let me not to the inarr iage of tt ue ininds
 1 '
01-ientntio~z
for.tlze
Strtdy of Poetry f t' I
d1 /
Love's ~ t / T i r n e l sfool /tho*ugh rosy*lips land cheeks

" , 1- 9" //"

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

(Sonnet, 116)

You may have noticed above that in sonnet 71 Shakespeare's theme is death, his own
death, not death in the abstract as in the case of Donne. Shakespeare is addressing his
beloved, the dark lady and asking her to forget all about him. The legacies of time are
suffering and despair and Shakespeare conveys his slow progress towards them with
the help of the solemn regularity of the iambic pentameter. It is, however, gently
disturbed as the narrative progresses. A caesura divides the third foot of the sixth line.
There are parantheses in lines 9 and 10. In the last line of the third quatrain
Shakespeare asks his beloved to forget him ( after having written the sonnet to
perpetuate his meinory ) nay more, let her love decay along with the decay of the
lover's body. The irony of this audacious request finds echo in the spondaic third foot
of the twelfth line. Shakespeare's resigned irony soon finds voice in the thirteenth line
where the pyrrhic first foot is succeeded by a spondee in the next.

Rhythm derives from the Greek rhythnzos which in turn derives from rhein which
means to flow. Rhythm is generally understood as an ordered alternation of
contrasting elements. However, you noticed above that Shakespeare gave expression
to his personal feelings in sonnet 71 by wrenching the metre. Mutability, death and
decay were a recurrent theme in the poetry of the Elizabethan age and the ground
rhythm of iambic pentameter adequately expresses it. However, if Shakespeare had
made periodicity of accent the sine qua lion of his rhythm it would have been only at
the cost of his expressive range.
1
Unlike sonnet 71, sonnet 116 is, to use Gerard Manley Hopltins's term, metrically
"counter-pointed ' I . Trochaic reversal in the first foot is not unusual in an iambic
pentameter line. However, Shakespeare makes use of a trochaic foot even in the
second. In fact the only iambic foot is the third foot which is succeeded by a pyrrhic-
spondaic combination. The first line is enjambed i.e., it runs over to the second line
with its three iambic feet and a caesura and a reversed fourth foot. The sudden
violence of the poet's feeling is checked with the help of two pyrrhic feet alternating , .
with the iambic ones in the last line of the first quatrain. The iambic ground rhythm is
fully established only in the second quatrain.

The third quatrain, however, begins with a reversal and a spondaic substitution. In the
. -
last line of the quatrain the rhetorical emphasis on the third foot is supported
acoustically with the help of a spondee. These deviations help the poet in lifting the
theme above mundane realities and communicating his "meaning" better.

We had a glimpse of Shakespeare's manipulation of metre in two of his sonnets. Even

with the help ofjust two samples we can say that Shakespeare has a powerf~~l and
distinctive style. The prosody of every poet of genius is unique and his rhythm is
perhaps the most personal of the expressive equipments. However, we cannot forget
that a language has a metrical pattern peculiar to itself. There is also a historical
determinant of the choice of metre. Complex factors contribute towards the
determination of rhythm. Nature herself said Aristotle, 'teaches the choice of the Prelude to the
proper measure'. However, it is the poet's task to hear her voice with sincerity and Study
humility if s h e is to discover herlhimself.

Self-check -Exercise IX

1. Briefly distinguish between rhyme and rhythm.

2. What according to you is rhythm ? Write in about 30 of your own words.

3. Do you think that rhythm can be an indicator of a poet's style ? Give reasons
for your answer. Does a poet's style tell us about the person that slhe is?
Orkr~tationfor tl~e
Study of Poetry

2.6 ANALYSIS OF A POEM

In the foregoing sections you read about the various elements of poeby. A
knowledge of some of the theoretical aspects of poeby would help you in reading
poems. Below you will read an ailalysis of Keats's 'On First Looking into Chapman's
I-Iomer.' Did you scan the poem and write y o ~ observations
r in SCG ITI (b) :' If you
did not you should now do so in order to benefit fioin in section. Let's now analyse
the poem.

'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'

John Keats (1795-1821) was the youngest of the Ron~ant~c poets. I-Ie was the so11oCa
manager of a livery stables in Moorfields. He died when Keats was eight. HISmother
remai-ried but died of triberculosis when he was fourteen. John the eldest child, had
two brothers - George and Tom - and a sister, Fanny. Keats was apprenticed to an
apothecary-surgeon at the age of fifteen. Before the apprenticeship he had recelved
his early education at Clarke's school an Enfield .

One evening in October 1816 Keats read the works of Homer in the translation of
the Elizabethan poet George Chapman. He did this in the company of Charles
Cowden Clarke, son of his former master and his life long friend. That Keats had a
monuinental experience is clear from "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

Somewhat lilte a true Petrarchan sonnet this poem also clearly divides the treatment
of the theme between the octave and the sestet. In the octave Keats sets the
background while the sestet describes the effect on him of his experience.

In the first half of the octave Keats speaks of his wide study of Western literature -
Which he characterizes as "realms of gold". Keats's metaphor gives us an insigllt into
his attitude towards literature. The 'goodly states' and 'Kingdoms' are the poet's
territories they have marked out as their own in the infinite area of the English or
Western languages. .However, these territories are held by poets not insolently as
Kingdoins are held but as a sign of their loyalty towards Apollo, the ancient classical
god of poetv. This is a sign of Keat's literary piety for we know that ICeats like
Shelley was not a Christian poet.

The second half of the octave extends the metaphor of the ltillgdom of poetry to tell
us that Keats had heard about Homer's epics although he had never read them.
Homer is traditionally recognised hs the fir& epic poet of Europe just like Valrnilti
and Vyasa were of India. They can be considered pure and original because they did
not borrow their images fiom other poets. Hoiner knew and understood human nature
dispassionately. is understanding was clear and unclouded by doubts, distractions
and fears. Besides, Homer was the monarch of poets deservmg the exalted tltlc of
'serene'. It is at the end of the octave th ~tKeats tells us about the cause of h ~ s
 exalta.tion i.e. his reading ( with CharIes Cowden Clarlte ) of Homer in Chapman's Prelude to the
translation. The octave structurally is not divided from the sestet as it ends in a colon. Study

Having told us about the background of his poem in the octave Keats tuins to
conlmunicate his enjoyment of I-Ion~erto us in the sestet. This is done through two
unforgett-able images. The first of these is that of a professional astronomer into
whose sight a new planet has moved in. The second is that of a discoverer such as
I-lernan Cortez w l ~ oconquered Mexico for Spain and became the first western
adventurer to enter Mexico city. Historically, however, it was Vasco Nunez de
Balbao who was the first European in 15 13 to stand iq,on the peak of Darien in
Panama. It is significant that Keats does not nsune any astrononler such as Galileo
who had discovered new satellites of the planet Jupiter. It would be in keeping with
Keats's piety to infer that in referring to 'some watcher of tllc skies' he is rnalting use
of the primitive figure of speech of periphrasis. If the images help Keats in
comlnunicating his peculiar feeling or flavour of the sense or meaning the rhythm of
his verse gives further density by suggesting the right tone and unfolding the
,intention while reemphasizing his meailing or sense, and feeling.

As pointed out earlier, 'On First Looking' is a Petrarchan sonnct that makes use of
four rhymes in the following scheme: abba abba cdcdcd. Perhaps it would be apposite
to point out that because of suc11 few rhymes, i.e. 4, the intensity of feeling is
communicated better than it could have been done with the help of a Shaltespearean
sonnet with its seven rhymes and relatively loose structure more suitable for a
meditative and philosophical tone.

Although European in appeal thematically, Keats's sonnet is typically English with

its ground rhythm of iambic pentameter. There are only two variations in the first
quatrain. There is a pyrrhic foot in the first and another in the fourth line. The second
quatrain begins wit11 a trochaic reversal and it announces the turn in the subject
matter. From literature in general, ICeats narrows down to Honler in the second half
of the octave.

The sestet which describes Keats's state of exaltation conveys it at the acoustic level
through variations from the blank verse ground rhythm. Lines 10,11,12 and 13 lmve
pyrrhic substitutions. I11 case we elided the unstressed first foot to include the article
'a' in the first foot of the tenth line we could'read it as an anapnesllc foot. However, in
that;cslse the line would have only four feet, It would become brief and fast
suggesting theswimming of a planet into the range of vision o l t l ~ astronomer
e with
astroi~onlicalspeed. There is another anapaest~csubstitution III the fourth foot o f t h e
twelfth line. However, the line retains the five feet notwitl~standingthe trisyllabic
foot, The last four lines are given to the explorers in the new world and the crescendo
comes in the last line which begins with a trochaic reversal. 'I'hc inlportance of the
theme for the poet is suggested by thc spondaic second foot o l the eleventh line
which begins the new con~parison.

Keats has been called a poet of the senses. The abstract idea of the discoveiy of a
new planet gives joy that is cerebral but the sight of the seascape from the peak in
Darien is more sensualand akin to Keats's character. The choice of Keats's imagery in
this sonnet and rna~ryingit to the approriate rhythm clinches the success of the poem.
'On First Loolcing into Chapman's Homer' has, no wonder, becoinc a felicitous record
of one of Keats's unforgettable personal expericnces of an encounter with thc father
of European poetry that was Homer.

Above we have tried to show how the various aspccts of a pocn~C ~ T be I knit togethcr
into an account of your appreciation of it especially with respect to yous observations
on rhythm. If you were in a class with your fiicnds we n~ighlh n ~ analysed
e a few
pocm:s and secn how our rcsponses varied. Ifpossiblc try it out from t ~ m cto time, at
the Study Cenlre or at a privately formed Study Group.
~rientationfor the
study of Poetry 2.7 LET'S SUM UP

This unit brings the orientation for the study of M.A. English in general and this
course on 'British Poetry' in particular to an end. With the help of these two units we
have tried to tell you how you can say something about a work of art in general and a
poem in particular;

We began the orientation by reacting basically to two portraits on the first and third
covers of this course. This was because the visual arts malce an immediate appeal.
They are appreciated both individually and socially, communally and in small groups.
A piece of literature, especially nondramatic literature, has to be enjoyed privately.
Hence we began the orientation by commenting on two pox-traits.

Criticism has often been described as the soul's adventure among masterpieces - and
this course which for you is an adventure of critical appreciation began with an
appreciation of two portraits that also symbolically meant to tell you about this
course. Besides, each block will have one or two copies of paintings that are meant to
serve as frontispieces and also visually tell you about the age. Just a few comments
are offered on them in the introduction to the blocks. You inay explore further on
your own because it has been recognized since time immemorial that proficiency in
several arts is necessary for specialization in any one. Did you read the epigraph of
this course? It: can as well be a desideratum for you.

In this unit we examined in the first place the thing called literature, especially poetry
in somewhat abstract terms. In the second place we examined the prosodic aspect of
poetry. Finally we showed how the various aspects can be put together in our critical
appreciation of a poem. In the last major section we have done for poetry what in the
previous unit we did fdr poe'aits - we critically appreciated a poem. This is what we
expect you to be able to do on this course. Critics say that the evolution of the rhythm
of a language tells us about the cultural evolution of the people, their changing and
evolving consciousness. If this is a tall claim I leave you to decide for yourself.

Hereafter the units will tell you either about an age or a poet or about some poems.
W e will expect you to be able to respond to all the three - the man, the milieu and the
momsnt that gave birth to the poem - in your comments on passages set from poems
prescribed for detailed study and printed in these blocks.

This is a long unit. You must not have expected it to be longer. At the M.A. level. we I
did not consider it necessary to describe the genres such as lyric, epic, ode, etc. or
figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, synechdoche, metonymy etc. You
should consult a dictionary of literature in order to discover the terms of art as and
when you feel the need to do so.

2.8 A BRIEF ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

This unit does not tell you about literary terms, figures of speech, etc. However, as a
\
student of literature you will be required to understand and use themi in various
* I
contexts including your essays and answers, Below are recommended a few
dictionaries and encyclopaedias for your use.

The new edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985) edited by
Margaret Drabble is intended to serve, as its predecessgr Sir Paul Harvey's ( 1932 ),
as a 'useful companion to ordinary everyday readers of English literature'. It gives
brief notes on authors of books, liter~lytrends such as Neo-classicism and
Romanticism, (Postmodernism is alas missing ), figures of speech such as oxymoron Prelude to the
and litotes, literary movements such as the Oxford, or Pre - Raphaelite and Aesthetic Study
movements and many other facts that a student of English literature would wish to
know fiom time to time. It is possible that the new edi'tion has not reached the shelves
of the library you have access to. That should not disturb you. I found Sir Paul's work
very delightful and in the beginning Drabble's work with its shorter notes was a bit of
a disappointmen1to me. Besides the Companion you may consult , Dictionary of
Literary Terms by Harry Shaw published by McGraw Hill Book Co. (New Delhi,
1972) and The Concise Oxford Dictionary ofLiterary Terms by Chris Baldick
(Delhi, 1990). The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry edited by Ian
Hamilton (Delhi, 1994) has a much broader coverage on poetry in English.

Literary criticism today inore than ever before has been under the influence of
disciplines such as rhetoric and Linvuistics. You would find A.B.Sharma's The
Growth and Evolution of Clasriwl Rhetoric (Ajanta: New Delhi, 1991 ,'92) at the
Study and Regional Centl.6 ,: is meant to introduce classical rhetoric to distant
learners in India like yc~rself.For a quick reference to terms such as felicity
conditions or lexie runsult A Dictionary of Stjrlistics by Katie Wales published by
Logman ( London, 1989 ). Encyclopedia ofliterature aizd Criticism edited by Martin
Coyle et. al. ( Routledge: London, 1990 ) has long articles written by experts on
various aspects of literature including an article on 'Postnlodemism' by Robert B. Ray
( pp. 131 - 147 ).

In case you wish to study some thought provolting essays on poetry and its 'meaning'
I should recommend just two: the first one is by Roinan Jakobson called 'What is
Poetry?' ( pp. 368 - 378 ) in Language alld iiternttlre edited by Krystyna Pomorska
and Stephen Rudy ( Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Ma, 1987 ) and the other
one called 'The Third Meaning' ( pp. 52 - hR) by Roland Barthes in hzage, Mtlsic',.
Text ( Flamingo: London, 1982 ). We may allude to those essays a few tiines ill th~s
course. The character of critical appreciation of literzitll*.- ;r. general and poetry in
particular has changed radically over the last c ~ ~ pofl edecades and its influence has
been felt in the English departments in India as well. It would be a good idea to read
Teny Eagleton's Literary Theory with its chapters on reception theory,
phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, stn~cturalism,semiotics, etc. It will
also be a good general introduction for your M.A. ( English) programme.

2.9 ANSWERS TO SELF-CHECK EXERCISES

Exercise I :

1. The reader adds to the meaning of a poetic text. The poem is of course the
cause of the meaning. I-Iowever, that is not the only cause. I1 has to be
understood in terms of our background knowledge of the poem. However, we
cannot understand it unless we do so in the light of our own experience of
life. The reader re-creates meaning.
2. A poem is made or words just as a portrait is made of colours or a piece of
music is an arrangement of sounds. There, however, the matter does not end.
A real poem (as opposed to mere verse) elnobodies a poet's life's experience,
an intense moment ofrevelation of life's truths, joys and sorrows. Just as a
formula in n-iathematics or a sootra in Sanskrit grammar embodies more than
meets the eye a poem appears to revcal truths as we go on living.

Note : The answers above are subjective and your responses may not be in full
agreement with mine. However, think over the matter . You should discuss your own
answers, if you can, in your peer group.
Orientfltion for tire Exercise 11:
Study of Poetry w /
1. ~n woods/ ~ r k / g r

The two lines above are in iambic dimeter. However, they are Izypermetrical which
means that an unaccented rhyming syllable is at the end of each line.

The quatrain above is in regular iambic trimeter.

Above.there are two couplets in regular iambic tetrameter,

4.

lines alternate with iambic tetrameter IIIICS. We

In the stanza above i a ~ ~ l btrin~etcr
ic
also notice that 'swell' and 'fell' rhyme but the first and third lines don't. We thus get
the inlpressiorl that the stanza could also be written as iambic heptameter couplets.

5.
4 u / "/ "
I put /my h a t upon/rny head
1
I I
4 1 4 /
A% d l k e d l i n t o /the strand

)/
Whose hat was in his hand.

Thc poem above is iambic in rhythm alternating tetrameter and trimeter in verse
Icngth.

Self-Chcck Exercise 111

Now you may scan a couple of passages l'r.0111Shakespeare and yeats and write your
comments on thcm in the r9F:lcr.provided:
 Prelude to the
U I dl/ I J /d Study
As hap/py pro/loGes to /the swell/ing act

" f'u!J-. q" $"

Why hat9 it g en mc ea lest of uccess,
1

$
s I / "
gcdd,d,jrvhvy dcJ?yicldto L. ..
sugge ion

Shakespeare: Macbeth

If you read Shakespeare's Mucbetlz in U~~dersta~lding Drama (EECi07) you must

have recognised the words of the eporiym?rc; hel-u, 111 the play. Macbeth met the three
witcl~eson his way back from the battleiielr! v41o had addressed him sucessively as
Duke of Glarnis, Thane of Cawdor and finally as King of Scotland. Impressed by his
display of courage Duncan has honoured him by giv~nghim the dukedom of Glamis
and lq1ianeshipof Cawdor. However, Macbeth ,,;~ oyct t King of Scotland whicli he
cannot be, unless, he thinks, he murders Duncan, his king and hel,.:factor. The idea of
regicide and ingratitude has shaken him and lie ad1n:ls of'liavtilg his 'functions' being
'smothered in s w i s e ' . The given extract is the openir.; p a t of tl~!iintrospection (for
us) and soliloquy for the audience in the theatre.

The ground rhythm of the the extract is iambic pentameter. However, lie does not
folIow it slavishly. There are interesting variations. Thcy are as below:

a the first line is iambic dimeter;

the first foot is a spondee;
e there are at least three pyrrhuses in a passage of ten lines i.e. in the 3rd, 6"' and 7'";
e seventh and eight11 lines are hypermetrical;
e there are two caesuras - in the third and seventh lines;
e the third f ~ ooft the sixth and the fourth foot of'tl~eseventh line havc a11 elision.

With the help of these variations Shakespeare imparts colloquial case and ~nlbrnxil~ty
to the soliloquy. We notice here, to use Coleridge's words, as we did not in the caw
of Sackville and Norton, metre being used as a pattern of cxl,cctation, lid liln~cntand
surprise. As Macbeth makes h ~ progess
s fiom coni'usion to clanly in tllc coursc 01the
soliloqy we notice the gound rhythm becoming nlore and mol.e nat~ual.Accol-d111glu
Harvey Gross, the function of prosody is 'to image life in a rich and cc>mplesway'.
We notice here for ourselves how prosody has succcrdecl in at-ticulating the
movement of the mind of Macbetll,

(b) On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Orientationfor the
Study of Poetry

For comments on thdprosodic features of this sonnet read section 2.6.

Self-check Exercise IV

/u /
Dismal screams,
.

I u /
Shrieks of woe,
/ b /
Sullen moans,

~ oI
l l ou 6
wgr ans. A.Pope

You could say that above there are three couplets in trochaic monometer.
However it would be more appropriate to call it a passage in trochaic dimeter
with the second foot being catalectic in each case. Perhaps the best idea would
be to call it a passage in the amp)(rnacer foot. The passage can be scanned in
any of the three ways.
0) RLh g e a s ~ e ,
SAet thp<s$e. J. Dryden

The two lines are in trochaic dimeter.

(c> Idhen t?{Biiqwirri%$u!x A
 P v u t, %
The .stanza is in trochaic tetrameter. However, the last foot of every line is catalectic. Study
We call a foot catalectic that has just an accented syllable.

Longfellow

The stanza is in trochaic tetrameter. Howeve:; the last foot of the second and fourth
lines are catalectic. The rhymescheme of the passage above is: a b a b.

The stanza is in trochaic pentameter.

The couplet is in trochaic hexameter.

Self-check Exercise V

The ground rthythm of the passage above is anapaestic trimeter. Howevcr, ihc lil.>t
foot of each of the first threelines is an iambus. Iambic substitutions in lines I I I ille

@l
-
anapasestic meter is quite common.
u /
The ~ s s ~ d c%e
a ~ ndd&-+Ji~~w!llf/an the fold
U " I

anapaestic tetrameteawithout any variatio

- 3
k uuiuu
Y
6
Not a drum was h ard, not a f neral n te,
U V /
As h ~ corpse
s G tce rlmp;rts xd h g m/d ;
L " " 1
Not a oldier discharged his farewxll s4ot,
u

u / u Y / U /
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
J
OrienSationfor the If repetition of a pattern is the sine qua non of rthythm, the passage is uniformly in
Study of Poetry tetrameter. However, out of sixteen feet only ten are in the anapaest. The remaining
feet are in the iambic.
- /JU " 1-- '
I am ou of huma ty's reach,

The couple of lines are in anapaestic trimeter. However, the first foot is an iambic
substitution.

Self-Check Exercise VI

Scan the followiilg and then briefly comment on the scansion.

/ - lUb 1
G ne to her eath! A A

/J
The two stanzas above are in dactylic dimeter. They rhyme alternately i.e.
a b a b c d c d . The second, fourth, sixth and eighth lines are catalectic.

The couplet/distich above is in dactylic trimeter..

Self-check Exercise VII

(4

Both the lines are in amphibrachic dimeter.

Self-check Exercise VIII

(a) There is alliteration in 'ruin' and 'ruminate' on the one hand and 'taught',

. 'time' and 'take' on the other.

(bj Dryden by employing 'pious', 'priesteraft' and 'polygamy' o n the one Prelude to the
Study
hand and 'begin' and 'before' on the other in his distich makes use of

the figure of sound o f alliteration.

(c) The repetition of the sibilants i.e 'shade' and 'soul' on the one hand and

'drowsilyland 'drown' aathe other create an acou&effect that is daily

experience. ~ h b a r t i c u l a type
r of effect is called alliteration.

(d) In the two lines the consonants in 'dawn' and 'war' are different.

However, there is an identity of vowel sounds. This is an example of

assonance.

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull b n e l , long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined .
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned.
Wilfred Owen : ' Strange Meeting '

In the passage above we have underlined four words. 'Escaped' and 'scooped' have
an identity of consonants while the vowels differ just as in 'groin' and 'groan' also. .
These are two examples of consonance.

Self-check Exercise IX

1. Rhyme refers to the agreement in terminal sounds of two or more words or

lines in verse such as and which ; increase and peace ; descend and
extend. Rhythm indicates measured flow of words and phrases in prose or
verse or movement suggested by the succession of strong or weak elements
or of different conditions in a given time span.
2. Rhythm is one of the factors of style. It indicates flow or progression in time.
Certain units get repeated in rhythm --a foot in English poetry when repeated
contributes to the rhythm of that poem. Poets often achieve effects not by
regularity but through breaks in the order, the established ground rhythm of
the poem.
3. Every poet, for that matter any artist, has a distinctive style and his / her
rhythm contributes towords it. We talk about Milton's grand style and
contrast it with the gentle art of Shakespeare. Milton writes about Heaven
and @ll, God and satan; Shakespeare about ordinary men and women
invol, ved in their common love and hate, ambition and defeat, pride and
hurnxty such as we experience ourselves. Their choice of words, rhythm.of
their larlguage are thus poles apart just as are their,themes. All these tell us
something about the persons that Milton and Shakespeare must have been in
their inner lives.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 ?-1400)