San Duanmu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199267590
- eISBN:
- 9780191708367
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267590.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics
This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Standard Chinese, including sound frequencies and onset, rhyme, syllable, and tonal frequencies. It also discusses ...
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This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Standard Chinese, including sound frequencies and onset, rhyme, syllable, and tonal frequencies. It also discusses reasons for the many non‐occurring syllables, the [ɚ]‐suffix, syllabic consonants, homophone density, and syllable loss.Less
This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Standard Chinese, including sound frequencies and onset, rhyme, syllable, and tonal frequencies. It also discusses reasons for the many non‐occurring syllables, the [ɚ]‐suffix, syllabic consonants, homophone density, and syllable loss.
San Duanmu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199267590
- eISBN:
- 9780191708367
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267590.003.0007
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics
This chapter discusses the impact of syllable structure on tone loss, tone spreading, and tonal inventory. When a syllable‐tone language loses complex rhymes, it undergoes massive tone loss, tone ...
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This chapter discusses the impact of syllable structure on tone loss, tone spreading, and tonal inventory. When a syllable‐tone language loses complex rhymes, it undergoes massive tone loss, tone spreading, and reduction in tonal inventory, as seen in Shanghai Chinese, which stands out against typical syllable‐tone languages, such as Standard Chinese.Less
This chapter discusses the impact of syllable structure on tone loss, tone spreading, and tonal inventory. When a syllable‐tone language loses complex rhymes, it undergoes massive tone loss, tone spreading, and reduction in tonal inventory, as seen in Shanghai Chinese, which stands out against typical syllable‐tone languages, such as Standard Chinese.
Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199553426
- eISBN:
- 9780191731020
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199553426.003.0007
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter presents Fabb and Halle's response to two of the more critical points made in the commentaries in the previous chapters. In their comment, Vaux and Myler bring up the metre of the ...
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This chapter presents Fabb and Halle's response to two of the more critical points made in the commentaries in the previous chapters. In their comment, Vaux and Myler bring up the metre of the well-known nursery rhyme ‘Hickory, dickory, dock’. They point out that this metre, which involves syllable groups that strikingly differ in length is beyond the capacity of the theory of metre presented in Chapter 2. Fabb and Halle acknowledge that this is correct, but only because they limited their chapter to metres of one kind, called strict metres. Referring to the parentheses in the metrical grid, Dilley and McAuley write that ‘it is not clear what these [two types of parenthesis] correspond to in terms of phonetic characteristics, perceptual or structural reality, etc.’, and they criticize this as a shortcoming that undermines the validity Fabb and Halle's theory. In response, Fabb and Halle note that the parentheses — as well as the asterisks and the metrical grids themselves — are parts of the abstract structure that they posit in order to account for the perception of musical rhythm, of poetic metre, and of the stress contours of words.Less
This chapter presents Fabb and Halle's response to two of the more critical points made in the commentaries in the previous chapters. In their comment, Vaux and Myler bring up the metre of the well-known nursery rhyme ‘Hickory, dickory, dock’. They point out that this metre, which involves syllable groups that strikingly differ in length is beyond the capacity of the theory of metre presented in Chapter 2. Fabb and Halle acknowledge that this is correct, but only because they limited their chapter to metres of one kind, called strict metres. Referring to the parentheses in the metrical grid, Dilley and McAuley write that ‘it is not clear what these [two types of parenthesis] correspond to in terms of phonetic characteristics, perceptual or structural reality, etc.’, and they criticize this as a shortcoming that undermines the validity Fabb and Halle's theory. In response, Fabb and Halle note that the parentheses — as well as the asterisks and the metrical grids themselves — are parts of the abstract structure that they posit in order to account for the perception of musical rhythm, of poetic metre, and of the stress contours of words.
Peter McDonald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199661190
- eISBN:
- 9780191749049
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
The rhymes in poems are important to understanding how poets write; and in the nineteenth century, rhyme conditioned the ways in which poets heard both themselves and each other writing. This book ...
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The rhymes in poems are important to understanding how poets write; and in the nineteenth century, rhyme conditioned the ways in which poets heard both themselves and each other writing. This book studies the significance of rhyme in Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Hopkins, and other poets, including Coleridge, Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Swinburne, and Hardy. The book’s stylistic reading of nineteenth-century poetry argues for Wordsworth’s centrality to issues of intention and chance in poets’ work, and offers a reading of the formal choices made in poetry as profoundly revealing points of intertextual relation. The book ranges widely, and includes detailed consideration of the critical meaning of both rhyme and repetition, bringing to bear an emphasis on form as poetry’s crucial proving-ground. In a series of detailed readings of important poems, the book shows how close formal attention goes beyond critical formalism, and can become a way of illuminating poets’ deepest preoccupations, doubts, and beliefs. Wordsworth’s sounding of his own poetic voice, in blank verse as well as rhyme, is here taken as a model for the ways in which later nineteenth-century poets attend to the most perplexing and important voicings of their own poetic originality.Less
The rhymes in poems are important to understanding how poets write; and in the nineteenth century, rhyme conditioned the ways in which poets heard both themselves and each other writing. This book studies the significance of rhyme in Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Hopkins, and other poets, including Coleridge, Byron, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Swinburne, and Hardy. The book’s stylistic reading of nineteenth-century poetry argues for Wordsworth’s centrality to issues of intention and chance in poets’ work, and offers a reading of the formal choices made in poetry as profoundly revealing points of intertextual relation. The book ranges widely, and includes detailed consideration of the critical meaning of both rhyme and repetition, bringing to bear an emphasis on form as poetry’s crucial proving-ground. In a series of detailed readings of important poems, the book shows how close formal attention goes beyond critical formalism, and can become a way of illuminating poets’ deepest preoccupations, doubts, and beliefs. Wordsworth’s sounding of his own poetic voice, in blank verse as well as rhyme, is here taken as a model for the ways in which later nineteenth-century poets attend to the most perplexing and important voicings of their own poetic originality.
Julie Coleman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199549375
- eISBN:
- 9780191720772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549375.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics, Lexicography
This chapter examines other British slang dictionaries of the period. Some dictionaries explain British slang to an American audience and others look back on the slang of bygone times. Several are ...
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This chapter examines other British slang dictionaries of the period. Some dictionaries explain British slang to an American audience and others look back on the slang of bygone times. Several are derived from or intended to supplement Farmer and Henley. They include the first dictionary of rhyming slang.Less
This chapter examines other British slang dictionaries of the period. Some dictionaries explain British slang to an American audience and others look back on the slang of bygone times. Several are derived from or intended to supplement Farmer and Henley. They include the first dictionary of rhyming slang.
San Duanmu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199267590
- eISBN:
- 9780191708367
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267590.003.0004
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics
Chinese is well known for having a simple syllable structure, clear syllable boundaries, and a small syllable inventory. This chapter examines what its structure is and what constraints influence ...
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Chinese is well known for having a simple syllable structure, clear syllable boundaries, and a small syllable inventory. This chapter examines what its structure is and what constraints influence occurring and non‐occurring syllables.Less
Chinese is well known for having a simple syllable structure, clear syllable boundaries, and a small syllable inventory. This chapter examines what its structure is and what constraints influence occurring and non‐occurring syllables.
San Duanmu
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199267590
- eISBN:
- 9780191708367
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267590.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics
This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Shanghai Chinese. Of interest is the fact that Shanghai has no diphthongs or contrastive codas. In addition, the ...
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This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Shanghai Chinese. Of interest is the fact that Shanghai has no diphthongs or contrastive codas. In addition, the rhyme inventory of Shanghai has shrunk drastically in the past 100 years.Less
This chapter offers an analysis of distribution patterns of sounds and syllables in Shanghai Chinese. Of interest is the fact that Shanghai has no diphthongs or contrastive codas. In addition, the rhyme inventory of Shanghai has shrunk drastically in the past 100 years.
Jeremy J. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199291953
- eISBN:
- 9780191710568
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291953.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
This chapter addresses a key problem in the study of sound-change, viz. the nature of the evidence. The notion of ‘witness’ is interrogated, and then the chapter deals with four sources of witnesses ...
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This chapter addresses a key problem in the study of sound-change, viz. the nature of the evidence. The notion of ‘witness’ is interrogated, and then the chapter deals with four sources of witnesses traditionally distinguished for the study of past states of the sound-system of a language: writing-systems, verse practices, contemporary writers on language, and reconstruction.Less
This chapter addresses a key problem in the study of sound-change, viz. the nature of the evidence. The notion of ‘witness’ is interrogated, and then the chapter deals with four sources of witnesses traditionally distinguished for the study of past states of the sound-system of a language: writing-systems, verse practices, contemporary writers on language, and reconstruction.
Todd Lewis and Subarna Tuladhar
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195341829
- eISBN:
- 9780199866816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341829.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Siddhārtha is depicted as if he had been raised by his foster mother Gautamī in the palace just like an urban Newar of the twentieth century. For example, pyucha bracelets adorn the child when he is ...
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Siddhārtha is depicted as if he had been raised by his foster mother Gautamī in the palace just like an urban Newar of the twentieth century. For example, pyucha bracelets adorn the child when he is two months old; his rice feeding ceremony is performed at six months; a garland of rice cake (yomari) is put around his neck at two years. Here again, the poet was careful not to depict Siddhārtha as supernormal. The ancient biographical text, the Lalitavistara, describes that when young Siddhārtha was taken to Shākya's sacred shrine room, stone images of gods and goddesses fell prostrate on the floor to show reverence. But Chittadhar simply has it that in the presence of the prince the stone images of gods and goddess paled and looked diminished. As King Shuddhodana looks on, the child is taught Newar nursery rhymes, juvenile Newari expressions, folk songs, and literature.Less
Siddhārtha is depicted as if he had been raised by his foster mother Gautamī in the palace just like an urban Newar of the twentieth century. For example, pyucha bracelets adorn the child when he is two months old; his rice feeding ceremony is performed at six months; a garland of rice cake (yomari) is put around his neck at two years. Here again, the poet was careful not to depict Siddhārtha as supernormal. The ancient biographical text, the Lalitavistara, describes that when young Siddhārtha was taken to Shākya's sacred shrine room, stone images of gods and goddesses fell prostrate on the floor to show reverence. But Chittadhar simply has it that in the presence of the prince the stone images of gods and goddess paled and looked diminished. As King Shuddhodana looks on, the child is taught Newar nursery rhymes, juvenile Newari expressions, folk songs, and literature.
J. R. Watson
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198270027
- eISBN:
- 9780191600784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019827002X.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
Discusses the relation of text to music, the relation of singing to writing, and Derrida's phoncentrism. The chapter also examines the use of different hymn metres; the structure of hymns, with ...
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Discusses the relation of text to music, the relation of singing to writing, and Derrida's phoncentrism. The chapter also examines the use of different hymn metres; the structure of hymns, with attention to line, verse, and whole hymn; and the importance of rhyme. It also discusses what James Montgomery says on hymn writing and hymn structure.Less
Discusses the relation of text to music, the relation of singing to writing, and Derrida's phoncentrism. The chapter also examines the use of different hymn metres; the structure of hymns, with attention to line, verse, and whole hymn; and the importance of rhyme. It also discusses what James Montgomery says on hymn writing and hymn structure.
Roger Pearson
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159179
- eISBN:
- 9780191673535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159179.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Poetry
Between ‘Sonnet allégorique de lui-même’ and the publication of Banville's Petit Traité de poésie franfaise in 1872, Mallarmé wrote at least two further sonnets: ‘De l'orient passé des Temps’ (1868: ...
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Between ‘Sonnet allégorique de lui-même’ and the publication of Banville's Petit Traité de poésie franfaise in 1872, Mallarmé wrote at least two further sonnets: ‘De l'orient passé des Temps’ (1868: in octosyllables and the only one before 1886 not in alexandrines) and ‘Dans le jardin’ (1871). Thus, up to 1872, we know of sixteen sonnets by him. In addition, two of these sixteen sonnets survive also in revised forms completed within the period (the 1866 version of ‘Tristesse d'été’; and ‘Alternative’, the 1869 version of ‘De l'orient passé des Temps’). In these eighteen sonnets Mallarme experiments with twelve different rhyme-schemes, and the number of rhymes in one sonnet ranges from four (on six occasions) to seven (on three occasions).Less
Between ‘Sonnet allégorique de lui-même’ and the publication of Banville's Petit Traité de poésie franfaise in 1872, Mallarmé wrote at least two further sonnets: ‘De l'orient passé des Temps’ (1868: in octosyllables and the only one before 1886 not in alexandrines) and ‘Dans le jardin’ (1871). Thus, up to 1872, we know of sixteen sonnets by him. In addition, two of these sixteen sonnets survive also in revised forms completed within the period (the 1866 version of ‘Tristesse d'été’; and ‘Alternative’, the 1869 version of ‘De l'orient passé des Temps’). In these eighteen sonnets Mallarme experiments with twelve different rhyme-schemes, and the number of rhymes in one sonnet ranges from four (on six occasions) to seven (on three occasions).
Coleman Julie
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199567256
- eISBN:
- 9780191595073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567256.003.0004
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics, Lexicography
Putting aside Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, rhyming slang dominates the production of British slang glossaries during this period. The dictionaries are often nostalgic ...
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Putting aside Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, rhyming slang dominates the production of British slang glossaries during this period. The dictionaries are often nostalgic accounts of simpler times, and use humour to express anxieties about issues such as immigration and women's liberation. Links between rhyming slang and the entertainment industries are clear in several of the glossaries produced.Less
Putting aside Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, rhyming slang dominates the production of British slang glossaries during this period. The dictionaries are often nostalgic accounts of simpler times, and use humour to express anxieties about issues such as immigration and women's liberation. Links between rhyming slang and the entertainment industries are clear in several of the glossaries produced.
Derek Attridge
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199681242
- eISBN:
- 9780191761553
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199681242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Criticism/Theory
The contemporary reader of English poetry is able to take pleasure in the sounds and movements of the English language in works written over the past eight centuries, and to find poems that convey ...
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The contemporary reader of English poetry is able to take pleasure in the sounds and movements of the English language in works written over the past eight centuries, and to find poems that convey powerful emotions and vivid images from this entire period. This book investigates the ways in which poets have exploited the resources of the language as a spoken medium—its characteristic rhythms, its phonetic qualities, its deployment of syntax—to write verse that continues to move and delight. The chapters in the first of the two parts examine a number of issues relating to poetic form: the resurgence of interest in formal questions in recent years, the role of syntactic phrasing in the operation of poetry, the function of rhyme, and the relation between sound and sense. The second part is concerned with rhythm and metre, explaining and demonstrating ‘beat prosody’ as a tool of poetic antaalysis, and discussing three major traditions in English versification: the free four-beat form used in much popular verse, the controlled power of the iambic pentameter, and the twentieth-century invention of free verse. All these topics are discussed by means of particular case studies, from the metrical form of a thirteenth-century lyric to uses of sound in recent poetry. Among the many poets whose work is considered are Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Keats, Tennyson, Hardy, Yeats, Frost, Ashbery, Hill, Plath, Paterson, and Prynne. Drawing on Derek Attridge’s thirty-five years of engagement with the forms of poetry, this volume provides extensive evidence of the importance of close attention to the moving and sounding of language in the poems we enjoy.Less
The contemporary reader of English poetry is able to take pleasure in the sounds and movements of the English language in works written over the past eight centuries, and to find poems that convey powerful emotions and vivid images from this entire period. This book investigates the ways in which poets have exploited the resources of the language as a spoken medium—its characteristic rhythms, its phonetic qualities, its deployment of syntax—to write verse that continues to move and delight. The chapters in the first of the two parts examine a number of issues relating to poetic form: the resurgence of interest in formal questions in recent years, the role of syntactic phrasing in the operation of poetry, the function of rhyme, and the relation between sound and sense. The second part is concerned with rhythm and metre, explaining and demonstrating ‘beat prosody’ as a tool of poetic antaalysis, and discussing three major traditions in English versification: the free four-beat form used in much popular verse, the controlled power of the iambic pentameter, and the twentieth-century invention of free verse. All these topics are discussed by means of particular case studies, from the metrical form of a thirteenth-century lyric to uses of sound in recent poetry. Among the many poets whose work is considered are Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Keats, Tennyson, Hardy, Yeats, Frost, Ashbery, Hill, Plath, Paterson, and Prynne. Drawing on Derek Attridge’s thirty-five years of engagement with the forms of poetry, this volume provides extensive evidence of the importance of close attention to the moving and sounding of language in the poems we enjoy.
David Robey
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184980
- eISBN:
- 9780191674419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184980.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The near-phonological nature of Italian spelling, together with the relative simplicity of the rules for rhyme in traditional Italian metrics, mean that rhyme in Italian is susceptible of almost the ...
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The near-phonological nature of Italian spelling, together with the relative simplicity of the rules for rhyme in traditional Italian metrics, mean that rhyme in Italian is susceptible of almost the same degree of electronic processing as the phonemes and alliterations in Dante's Divine Comedy. The ratio of types to tokens provides an index of the variety or range of rhymes in the poem: the more different rhymes there are in relation to the total number, clearly, the higher the ratio. The number of rhyme-types that occur only once within each cantica declines slightly from one to the next. The distribution of rhyme-words, as opposed to rhymes, does not strictly fall under our general heading of sounds, but it is a relevant consideration in this context, since the effect of a rhyme is inseparable from that of the word in which it is contained. This chapter also examines the distribution of accented vowels in rhyme in the Divine Comedy, the ten most common rhymes in the poem, and all phonemes in rhyme.Less
The near-phonological nature of Italian spelling, together with the relative simplicity of the rules for rhyme in traditional Italian metrics, mean that rhyme in Italian is susceptible of almost the same degree of electronic processing as the phonemes and alliterations in Dante's Divine Comedy. The ratio of types to tokens provides an index of the variety or range of rhymes in the poem: the more different rhymes there are in relation to the total number, clearly, the higher the ratio. The number of rhyme-types that occur only once within each cantica declines slightly from one to the next. The distribution of rhyme-words, as opposed to rhymes, does not strictly fall under our general heading of sounds, but it is a relevant consideration in this context, since the effect of a rhyme is inseparable from that of the word in which it is contained. This chapter also examines the distribution of accented vowels in rhyme in the Divine Comedy, the ten most common rhymes in the poem, and all phonemes in rhyme.
Sam Rohdie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992637
- eISBN:
- 9781526104151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992637.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
There are two symmetrical spaces in the film and a space between them. The spaces are the other side of each other and the contrary of one another: the interior is closed, social (meetings, ...
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There are two symmetrical spaces in the film and a space between them. The spaces are the other side of each other and the contrary of one another: the interior is closed, social (meetings, eroticism, conversations), the exterior is open and anti-social (private, hostile and misanthropic). Between the two is the bus that he travels in from one space to another. Monteiro plays within this simple structure where things become very complicated. Each space has its own rhythms and music through the editing and the shooting. Monteiro plays upon, as one might play with a poem or a piece of music, with the fixed and the passing, with duration and tempo, with rhymes and counterpoints.Less
There are two symmetrical spaces in the film and a space between them. The spaces are the other side of each other and the contrary of one another: the interior is closed, social (meetings, eroticism, conversations), the exterior is open and anti-social (private, hostile and misanthropic). Between the two is the bus that he travels in from one space to another. Monteiro plays within this simple structure where things become very complicated. Each space has its own rhythms and music through the editing and the shooting. Monteiro plays upon, as one might play with a poem or a piece of music, with the fixed and the passing, with duration and tempo, with rhymes and counterpoints.
Peter Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199273256
- eISBN:
- 9780191706370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273256.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Louis MacNeice's poetics in his Autumn Journal in the light of issues for international relations focused around the Munich Crisis of September 1938. The poet's plea for an ...
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This chapter discusses Louis MacNeice's poetics in his Autumn Journal in the light of issues for international relations focused around the Munich Crisis of September 1938. The poet's plea for an impure poetry that can include the complex world around it is held in relation with his emphasis on the organizing role of form. Autumn Journal's rhyming patterns and lineation are related to the political issues addressed so as to argue that both selves and others, and ethics and aesthetics cannot be kept in separate self-sufficient mental compartments.Less
This chapter discusses Louis MacNeice's poetics in his Autumn Journal in the light of issues for international relations focused around the Munich Crisis of September 1938. The poet's plea for an impure poetry that can include the complex world around it is held in relation with his emphasis on the organizing role of form. Autumn Journal's rhyming patterns and lineation are related to the political issues addressed so as to argue that both selves and others, and ethics and aesthetics cannot be kept in separate self-sufficient mental compartments.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199299287
- eISBN:
- 9780191715099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299287.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a ...
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This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a post-colonial critique and emerges with a post-Romantic recommitment to imaginative power, here reconceived as fictive linguistic play. Muldoon is found to be more insinuating and indirect than Byron, for all the Irish poet's admiration for the Byron who relishes ‘the rhyme on ‘Aristotle’ and ‘bottle’’. The chapter explores the ways in which Muldoon delights in the ludic and autonomous life of his words, a delight that militates against the expression of unambiguous convictions. It explores how the portrayal of Coleridge, Southey, Thomas Moore, and Byron in ‘Madoc’ involves Muldoon in playful, darkly comic critiques of the Romantic. The chapter argues that Muldoon does not simply retreat into textuality, and contends that the poet breathes new, if post-modernist, life into the Romantic quest poem.Less
This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a post-colonial critique and emerges with a post-Romantic recommitment to imaginative power, here reconceived as fictive linguistic play. Muldoon is found to be more insinuating and indirect than Byron, for all the Irish poet's admiration for the Byron who relishes ‘the rhyme on ‘Aristotle’ and ‘bottle’’. The chapter explores the ways in which Muldoon delights in the ludic and autonomous life of his words, a delight that militates against the expression of unambiguous convictions. It explores how the portrayal of Coleridge, Southey, Thomas Moore, and Byron in ‘Madoc’ involves Muldoon in playful, darkly comic critiques of the Romantic. The chapter argues that Muldoon does not simply retreat into textuality, and contends that the poet breathes new, if post-modernist, life into the Romantic quest poem.
Joshua Landy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195188561
- eISBN:
- 9780199949458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195188561.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Max Weber was half right: modernity is indeed characterized most centrally by the “disenchantment of the world.” At the same time, however, modernity is also characterized by the re-enchantment of ...
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Max Weber was half right: modernity is indeed characterized most centrally by the “disenchantment of the world.” At the same time, however, modernity is also characterized by the re-enchantment of the world, an enchantment, this time, on strictly secular terms. In their different ways, stage magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé both sought new, secular sources of wonder, order, and value; both came to see self-deception as indispensable to that end; and both, finally, understood that in order to maintain our necessary illusions—in order to preserve them, though we recognize them for what they are—we have to become skilled at adopting a rather peculiar state of mind. It is precisely this state of mind, a state of quasi-simultaneous conviction and distrust, that Robert-Houdin’s tricks and Mallarmé’s poems, with their paradigmatically proto-modernist reflexivity, require for their appreciation. Aesthetic modernism is not just a game, a marketing ploy, a “statement,” or a symptom; it is, instead, a literary training-ground. To become skilled at handling modernist fictions is, in the end, to strengthen our capacity to re-enchant the world.Less
Max Weber was half right: modernity is indeed characterized most centrally by the “disenchantment of the world.” At the same time, however, modernity is also characterized by the re-enchantment of the world, an enchantment, this time, on strictly secular terms. In their different ways, stage magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé both sought new, secular sources of wonder, order, and value; both came to see self-deception as indispensable to that end; and both, finally, understood that in order to maintain our necessary illusions—in order to preserve them, though we recognize them for what they are—we have to become skilled at adopting a rather peculiar state of mind. It is precisely this state of mind, a state of quasi-simultaneous conviction and distrust, that Robert-Houdin’s tricks and Mallarmé’s poems, with their paradigmatically proto-modernist reflexivity, require for their appreciation. Aesthetic modernism is not just a game, a marketing ploy, a “statement,” or a symptom; it is, instead, a literary training-ground. To become skilled at handling modernist fictions is, in the end, to strengthen our capacity to re-enchant the world.
Roger Pearson
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159179
- eISBN:
- 9780191673535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159179.003.0021
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Poetry
Mallarmé was a fundamentalist. For him, a poet is a wordsmith, employing an everyday medium to transmute the hopes and fears of the human soul into a golden treasury of sound and meaning. ‘Religion’ ...
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Mallarmé was a fundamentalist. For him, a poet is a wordsmith, employing an everyday medium to transmute the hopes and fears of the human soul into a golden treasury of sound and meaning. ‘Religion’ comes from ‘religare’, which means to bind, and Mallarmé is a ‘religious’ poet in that he binds words together into patterns which promise significance. Like Vulcan, the blacksmith husband of Venus, he forges homophony into the thunderbolts of rhyme: and rhyme — the marriage of sameness and difference — sets the seal on the essential connectedness of all things and thus constitutes the ‘divine’ projection of a universal human aspiration.Less
Mallarmé was a fundamentalist. For him, a poet is a wordsmith, employing an everyday medium to transmute the hopes and fears of the human soul into a golden treasury of sound and meaning. ‘Religion’ comes from ‘religare’, which means to bind, and Mallarmé is a ‘religious’ poet in that he binds words together into patterns which promise significance. Like Vulcan, the blacksmith husband of Venus, he forges homophony into the thunderbolts of rhyme: and rhyme — the marriage of sameness and difference — sets the seal on the essential connectedness of all things and thus constitutes the ‘divine’ projection of a universal human aspiration.
Priscilla Bawcutt
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129639
- eISBN:
- 9780191671807
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129639.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses Dunbar's moral poems, classified as the ‘Divine’ and ‘Moralities’ poems. Dunbar's poems are strongly imbued with a sense of mutability of this world. His counsels in his poems ...
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This chapter discusses Dunbar's moral poems, classified as the ‘Divine’ and ‘Moralities’ poems. Dunbar's poems are strongly imbued with a sense of mutability of this world. His counsels in his poems are written from the perspective of the eternal and are constructed within the frames of the Christian perspective on death, judgement, hell and heaven. In most of his poems are didactic verses that are embedded in couplets, quatrains and royal rhymes. His topics range from the mundane to the most holy prayers and teachings of the Church influenced by Latin or the vernaculars, by proverbs, homilies or other works of instruction, often displayed in rich symbolic imagery or in terse repetitions or refrains.Less
This chapter discusses Dunbar's moral poems, classified as the ‘Divine’ and ‘Moralities’ poems. Dunbar's poems are strongly imbued with a sense of mutability of this world. His counsels in his poems are written from the perspective of the eternal and are constructed within the frames of the Christian perspective on death, judgement, hell and heaven. In most of his poems are didactic verses that are embedded in couplets, quatrains and royal rhymes. His topics range from the mundane to the most holy prayers and teachings of the Church influenced by Latin or the vernaculars, by proverbs, homilies or other works of instruction, often displayed in rich symbolic imagery or in terse repetitions or refrains.
