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In what way is it possible to represent the accentual rhythm of Dante's Divine Comedy, or any other Italian poem, systematically? Traditionally, the Italian hendecasyllable has been said to fall into three types, according to the location of accents in the line: on syllables 6 and 10; or 4, 8, and 10; or 4, 7, and 10. The first type is termed a maiore, the second and the third a minore. To say that syllable and phrase accentuation are a matter of stress means that they can be identified internally by the speaker, in terms of the energy with which he or she pronounces the syllables in question; and outwardly in terms of volume and length. In addressing the question of scansion, this chapter retains with very few exceptions the word accents of all polysyllables, whatever their position in the phrase, and assigns their accent to large classes of monosyllables on which an accent is possible in normal parlance.

The chapter describes ways of analysing different rhythmic interpretations of phrases and other phonological constituents in Icelandic and Faroese in terms of metrical grids and how intonational patterns can be mapped onto these grids. Systematic research on Icelandic intonation is reported, and earlier descriptions of Faroese intonation are given. It is shown that Icelandic has an inventory of high and low accents which may be preceded or followed by high or low leads or trails, and a set of high and low edge tones. Pragmatic meaning may be expressed with the help of intonation, but there are also some systematic rules of correspondence between morphosyntax and intonational patterns. In the final section it is shown that there are no word tones in Modern Icelandic or Modern Faroese, and there is little reason to assume that such a correlation was ever systematically present in of the two languages

This chapter examines abstract properties of phonology, with an emphasis on the behavior and representational status of consonants that do not fit neatly into canonical syllable templates. Many phonologists have argued that such consonants do not attach to syllables in the normal way, but they do not take into account the behavior of other phenomena that also suggest the existence of extrasyllabicity. The chapter presents linguistic evidence and arguments in support of extrasyllabicity and illustrates how phonological segments can attach to prosodic nodes higher than the syllable. It also shows that the specific locus of attachment can vary both between and within languages. In particular, it discusses phonetics, sonority sequencing, aspiration, and prosodic phenomena such as stress assignment, metrical scansion, lengthening, and shortening, along with morphology and external linguistic phenomena involving child language acquisition, aphasia, and psycholinguistic experiments.

Rhythm works to seduce readers and make poems memorable. Although the distinction between rhythm and meter is a slippery one, it seems essential since the traditional foot-scansion of metrical analysis proves inadequate to the experience of rhythm, treating some simple rhythms as complex or marginally acceptable and failing to capture rhythmically-important differences. Although accounts of rhythm by such critics as Attridge, Aviram, and Blasing differ significantly, they contribute to a discussion of poetry that helps to account for the pleasure it affords and might help improve the teaching of poetry..

This chapter describes the chief features of versification in poetry written in the Middle High German Classical period (c.1170–c.1230) and in the remainder of the Middle High German period. The four parts of the chapter treat metre (anacrusis, interior of the line, cadence), rhyme (types of rhyme, rhyme schemes), lines of verse in context (rhythmical continuity or discontinuity between lines of verse, metrical and syntactical structures, rhyming couplets and syntactical structures), and verse forms (non-strophic verse, strophic verse in heroic and lyric poetry, the ‘Stollenstrophe’). Tips for the scansion of verse are included. Technical terminology in English and German is explained throughout. Examples are in the main drawn from the selection of texts (Chapter 5). In the case of lyric verse, the general account in this chapter is supplemented by metrical analyses of each song included in the selection.

Over the course of his writing, Leonard B. Meyer distinguished between two kinds of music analysis: style analysis, which identifies the “rules of the game” operating in a collection of music, and critical analysis, which seeks to explain the choices of artists by identifying the range of possibilities they confront at each moment and interpreting the path they take. This chapter prepares for the critical analysis of flow in rap music by constructing a corpus of rap verses, taking care to document and maintain rap’s chronological, geographical, and stylistic diversity. The chapter also describes how primary constituents of flow (text, rhythm, and phrase) are digitally represented in the corpus.

The first half of this chapter uses the simplified model of turn sequencing outlined in Chapter 1 to develop a more precise vocabulary with which to talk about dialogical form. It proposes three new terms to describe how sequences of turns are built: intervention, blanking, and apostrophe. The second half of the chapter tests this approach on a series examples culled from the work of other critics: Mick Short on Buckingham’s attempt to claim his reward from the newly crowned Richard (Richard III, 4.2); Lynne Magnusson on Desdemona’s insistence that she follow her husband to Cyprus (Othello, 1.3); and Stephen Orgel on the reassignment of the ‘Abhorred slave’ speech from Miranda to Prospero (Tempest, 1.2). In each case, the turn-taking approach yields fresh insights, enabling us to make distinctions at a greater level of detail than had previously been possible.

From this chapter the book goes more deeply into one productive and central author: Plutarch. The basis for the book is a scansion of all of Plutarch’s Lives, not just the end of sentences but every small phrase: 2,297 pages, almost 100,000 phrases. For the other half of Plutarch’s work, the philosophical and related writings, the end of every sentence has been scanned. There thus exists a much more abundant body of material for the consideration of Plutarch than for any other Greek author. It is possible to advance from scansion into interpretation. With many detailed examples, and with the help of ancient comments, a connection is indicated between rhythm and emphasis, or attention; thus a rhythmic close draws attention to the words that create it. This can be independently confirmed from context, word-order, etc., and is demonstrated on a large scale in the book as a whole.