Derek Attridge - The Rhythms of English Poetry

ENGLISH LANGUAGE SERIES

TITLE NO. 14

The Rhythms of English Poetry

ENGLISH LANGUAGE SERIES
General Editor: Randolph Quirk

Title no.:

1 INVESTIGATING ENGLISH STYLE
David Srystal and Derek Davy

2 THE MOVEMENT OF ENGLISH PROSE
Ian A. Gordon

4 A LINGUISTIC GUIDE TO ENGLISH POETRY
Geoffrey N. Leech

7 AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN ENGLISH WORD-FORMATION
Valerie Adams

9 COHESION IN ENGLISH
M. A. K. Halliday and Ruquaiya Hasan

10 AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH TRANSFORMATIONAL SYNTAX
Rodney Huddleston

11 MEANING AND FORM
Dwight Bolinger

12 DESIGNS IN PROSE
Walter Nash

13 STYLE IN FICTION
Geoffrey N. Leech and Michael H. Short

14 THE RHYTHMS OF ENGLISH POETRY
Derek Attridge

16 THE LANGUAGE OF HUMOUR
Walter Nash

17 GOOD ENGLISH AND THE GRAMMARIAN
Sidney Greenbaum

18 RHYTHMIC PHRASING IN ENGLISH VERSE
Richard D. Cureton

19 THE INFINITIVE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH
Pattrick J. Duffley

The Rhythms of English Poetry

DEREK ATTRIDGE

University of Strathclyde

First published 1982 by Pearson Education Limited
Fifth impression 1999

Published 2014 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-55105-3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Attridge, Derek

The rhythms of English poetry. -(English language series; 14)

1. English language Versification

I. Title II. Series

921.009 PE1509 80-42114

In one of the first books in this series, Ian Gordon was concerned with the claim that the style and rhythm, The Movement of English Prose, displayed a throb of continuity over a millennium and more. Dr Attridge in the present volume is concerned with no less a claim, no less grand a theme: the unity of tradition, extending over six hundred years, manifested by the main stream of English accentual-syllabic verse. His exposition of this theme demands an initial examination of the partly distinct, partly intertwined theories that have informed critical approaches to poetics: and then the bulk of this volume a detailed analysis in turn of rhythm and metre, themselves also partly distinct and partly intertwined, and demanding from the reader both a sensitive ear and an appreciation of technical, logical argument.

Dr Attridge brings to this daunting enterprise a well-practised expertise in the field. He won high acclaim to give one outstanding example for his book on Elizabethan classical verse, Well-weighed Syllables, which was published in 1974. But in that work, as in this, one is struck not only by the keen historical knowledge of poetic form but by the deep personal involvement in (and love of) poetry itself. Even these, though essential, are not sufficient. Derek Attridge has made himself expert in linguistics historical, traditional, structural, and transformational. And all these aspects of his scholarship he is able to communicate withl enthusiasm and conviction. As with some other successful books in this series, we have here an author who is a true philologist, effortlessly straddling literary values and linguistic technicalities, convincingly showing the relevance of each to the other, excitingly indicating analogies with music at one moment and basic relationships with ordinary speech at another.

Indeed, for all its artfulness and (sometimes strenuous) complexity, poetry is not disjunct from but intimately bedded in the most commonplace fundamentals of our everyday speech rhythm and grammar: even in the most everyday strategies of conversational discourse. For this reason alone, The Rhythms of English Poetry deserves a proudly central place in this series. As English has increasingly come into worldwide use, there has arisen a correspondingly increasing need for more information on the language and the ways in which it is used. The English Language Series seeks to meet this need and to play a part in further stimulating the study and teaching of English by providing up to date and scholarly treatments of topics most relevant to present-day English including its history and traditions, its sound patterns, its grammar, its lexicology, its rich variety and complexity in speech and writing, and its standards in Britain, the USA, and the other principal areas where the language is used.

RANDOLPH QUIRK

University College London
January, 1982

If every book were prefaced by a description of its ideal reader, much of the publics time and effort might be saved; but this volume permits of no such convenient premonitory paradigm. The only requirements I can think of are an interest in the subject, sufficient patience to follow an extended argument, and some acquaintance with, and pleasure in, English poetry. Readers with an exclusively literary or exclusively linguistic background may find that occasionally they are asked to think in ways more characteristic of the other discipline, but advances in the study of poetic language depend on just such broadmindedness.

A single book on rhythm and metre can deal only with the most important features of the subject, especially if in its examination of those features it aims to take as little as possible for granted and to leave as little as possible unexplained. By and large, therefore, I have had to limit my scope to a single remarkably homogeneous body of poetry: the main tradition of regular accentual-syllabic verse in Middle and Modern English. This has meant keeping off some of the most picturesque byways of English versification, such as syllabic verse, classical imitations, concrete poetry, and the metrical experiments and theories of a host of individual writers, as well as avoiding the currently busy freeway of nonmetrical poetry; progress along these routes must wait upon an understanding of the central network from which they take their departure. It has also meant giving scant attention to other varieties of sound patterning like alliteration or rhyme, and leaving out of consideration altogether the wider manifestations of rhythm in the sequences of expectancy and satisfaction created by syntax, large-scale formal and generic conventions, and structures of meaning. And since my interest is primarily in the singleness of this metrical tradition in the capacity, that is, of the modern reader to engage directly with rhythmic forms produced over the past six hundred years I have deliberately ignored its historical dimension. Instead, I have drawn extensively and promiscuously on the poetry of writers with established reputations from Shakespeare to Yeats for most of my examples, because it is largely on familiarity with this body of poetry that the modern readers metrical knowledge is based.