I recently discovered that
, philosophy professor at MIT and writer of , believes that concepts of metrical feet—like iambs and trochees—aren’t very useful for understand poetic meter. I was struck by this, and we immediately agreed to write a dialogue on the subject. And here it is! As you will see, we don’t even agree on how to scan notable lines of English verse, though you will read about linguistic theory, Robert Frost and Ezra Pound, and dipodic verse while we debate.First some housekeeping.
Last week, I said the next play for the Shakespeare book club was As You Like It. This is wrong. **The next play is Henry IV, part I**. Schedule here.
For The Newstatesman I reviewed Molly the controversial new biography by Blake Butler. For The Critic, I wrote about the proposed Jane Austen statue in Winchester and how those who oppose it are hypocritical snobs. For The FitzwilliamI wrote about James Joyce and whether he rejected Ireland. (One of my better pieces, recommended.)
Henry: Brad, start by telling me your position. Is sounds like you don’t think the traditional view of prosody, where we count the iambs and trochees in a line of verse, is correct?
Brad: Ha, that’s a bit unfair, you asking the simple question, me having to give the long-winded answer. But here goes.
A line of English verse (or any stretch of the English language for that matter) has a rhythm, which is just its pattern of stresses. You could represent that rhythm by marking, for each syllable, whether it is stressed or unstressed, though that would oversimplify. Stress comes in gradations: in “con-sid-er-a-tion” both “sid” and “a” are stressed, but “a” has a stronger stress. The question before us, though, is about meter: when is a line of verse in iambic pentameter—or trochaic tetrameter or whatever, but let’s focus on iambic pentameter. The answer has something to do with the line’s rhythm, but what?
In a high school poetry class you might be told this answer: a line is in iambic pentameter when its rhythm is “WSWSWSWS” (W=weak, unstressed; S-strong, stressed). In traditional terms, an “iambic foot” is a weak syllable followed by a strong syllable; in those terms, iambic pentameter is five (Latin penta) iambic feet. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” fits this paradigm.
Still, this definition just will not do. If it were right, then Shakespeare and Milton—even Milton!—would constantly be failing to write in iambic pentameter. To take one famous example, here’s a line from Paradise Lost:
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death
The rhythm is “S S S S S S W S W S,” at least three violations of the “rule.” Or consider
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain
(Also Milton.) That’s W S W W S S W S W S. Last example, Wordsworth:
Almost as silent as the turf they trod
That’s S W W S W W W S W S.
So the true conditions on a line’s rhythm, that it must meet to be in iambic pentameter, must be much more complicated. I’ve tried to understand what Professors of Linguistics who have studied this have said about it, but it’s hard, and they don’t agree anyway. (One proposed the rule: a stressed syllable S may not occupy an unstressed position W if the stress is “lexical,” and “there is a node N that dominates W and immediately dominates S.”1) In any regard, in their search for those conditions, the notion of a foot, and/or stating the conditions under which “trochaic substitutions” are allowed (putting a strong-weak sequence where a weak-strong should be), do not seem to be of much use.
Henry: But you’re a philosophy professor! You’re good at giving these answers! And that was admirably clear.
Let me argue for the role of common sense. I don’t want to wave away the study of linguistics, but isn’t this all a bit fussy? That exceptions exist is not to prove that the rule isn’t real. As Samuel Johnson said,
If I come to an orchard, and say there’s no fruit here, and then comes a poring man, who finds two apples and three pears, and tells me, “Sir, you are mistaken, I have found both apples and pears,” I should laugh at him: what would that be to the purpose?’
Most of the time, English poetry fits metrical patterns. The exceptions wouldn’t be worth mentioning if the standard wasn’t assured. The fact is, if you pick a line of English verse at random, it is likely to be iambic.
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