English historical metrics

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Lingua

110 (2000) 701-708 www.elsevier.nl/locate/lingua

Book review C.B. McCully and J.J. Anderson (eds.). English historical metrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (257 pp., including references and index). ISBN 0 521 55464 0 (hb.). g37.50 (US $59.95). Reviewed by Michael Redford, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden. The Netherlands. English Historical Metrics (EHM hereafter), edited by C.B. McCully and J.J. Anderson, contains fourteen articles stemming from contributions to the First G.L. Brooks Symposium, which was held in 1991 at the University of Manchester. The contributors to EHM are eminent scholars, whose work on metrics has appeared regularly in academic journals and in book form. Indeed many, or perhaps even most, of the problems discussed in EHM are not new, but the book is not a rehash -far from it. The contributors provide new analyses of central questions facing historical metrics: How do poets manipulate (in a positive and a negative sense) the phonology of a language ? What is the correspondence between the synchronic state of a language and the meters poets use? How do diachronic changes reveal themselves in meter? How can we avoid the bane of circularity when trying to reconstruct prosody from meter? How can we recover, or attempt to recover, the Urtexts, and thus the Urmeters, of works that have suffered from the ravages of time, as well as at the hands of scribes and editors? Bringing linguists, literary critics, philologists and textual critics together emphasizes the advantage, if not the necessity, of an interdisciplinary approach to these questions. Because of the rift between linguistics and literary criticism, metrics has often been claimed by one field or been regulated to no-man’s_land, and one of the volume’s important contributions to metrics is simply the diversity of the contributors. (Although for some reason the interaction between scholars of the ‘dead’ periods of English seems, in general, to be more lively.) As a result of this diversity, the book addresses several audiences. First, students of English literature and linguistics will find well-written summaries of problems and theories that relate directly to their studies of Old and Middle English. Second, the methodologies employed are applicable to other languages besides English, and EHM is also an introduction to Historical Metrics in general. Finally, advanced students and specialists of English and Metrics will find new twists on old problems to grapple with. 0378-2166/00/$ - see front matter PII: SOO24-3841(00)00005-X

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Book review I Lingua 110 (2000) 701-708

The volume is organized according to the historical periods examined, beginning with Old English (OE), followed by Middle English (ME) verse forms: the Early Middle English (eME) Ormulum, Alliterative Verse, and iambic pentameter. Two papers examine issues concerning textual criticism. Due to the number of contributions it is impossible to address each one except cursorily; so, after a brief summary, I will instead focus on some of the broader issues raised and discussed in the book. The plenary article by Cable (pp. 7-29) examines stress clash in OE, in Middle English Alliterative meter, and in the Renaissance. Based in part on Cable (1991), his contribution makes several important claims: the basis of OE meter is a four-syllable pattern; Siever’s Types D and E are not mirror images; the verse design of Chaucer’s ‘alternating’ iambic pentameter is fundamentally different from Shakespeare’s ‘foot-based meter’. Russom (pp. 31-41) employs his word-foot theory of OE verse (Russom, 1987) to provide a metrical account of Kuhn’s laws (1933), which capture generalizations about the distribution of particles, clitics and words within the OE line. These laws apply almost exclusively to Types B and C, and make incorrect predictions about other types, because the dichotomy particle vs. clitic is insufficient, according to Russom. He proposes a scale of more wordlike to less wordlike (Particles > clitics > unstressed prefixes), which in conjunction with his word foot, can account for the placement of words and wordlike elements in OE meter. McCully (pp. 42-58) analyzes how the possibilities of the final lift, rather than Alliteration, serve to demarcate the line as a metrical constituent in OE meter. He concludes that alliteration is not a structure-defining property of OE meter and then provides a template, from which OE line patterns can be derived. Obst (pp. 5972) presents arguments against such templatic accounts, because the assumption that all lines must invariably contain four positions cannot explain the aberrant behavior of syllables with secondary stress. He proposes a rhythmic, isochronous (a.k.a. timer) analysis of the meter of Beowulf, based on distributional regularities. Stockwell (pp. 73-94) gives an overview of four recent books on OE meter: Russom (1987) and Cable (1991); Obst (1987) and Creed (1990). The pairing of the books reflects the respective ‘schools’ to which the authors belong, which more or less follows the age-old rivalry between the Siever ‘stressers’ and the Heusler ‘timers’. Stockwell is more discerning and his paper is an aid for anyone who wish to gain an understanding of the various theoretical accounts that have recently been proposed. Minkova (pp. 95-119) begins the ME section of EHM and examines the highly regular, oft-maligned meter of the Ormulum. She argues succinctly and conclusively that the meter of the Ormulum can provide important evidence for reconstructing the stress pattern of eME, and thus the pitfall of circularity can be avoided. In a tour-deforce she touches on many aspects of Generative Metrics, including beat splitting, the role of the Prosodic Hierarchy in defining mismatches, and correspondence rules. Borroff (pp. 120-133) discusses the role alliteration plays as a connective property of poetry, i.e. as a systematic sound symbolism. Her discussion of ‘g’ alliteration in Beowulf and Sir Gwain and the Green Night emphasizes the different functions alliteration has in the two works, from which she concludes that alliteration in OE and ME are functionally distinct. The occurrence of non-normative alliterative patterns in the ME long-line verse is discussed by Matonis (pp. 134-149), who concludes

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that these deviations are solely an alternative taken by the poet, and in the case of the Gwain poet, for exceptionally expressive purposes. Osberg (pp. 150174) examines the “heteromorphic verse” (p. 1.50; cf. McIntosh, 1982) of Pearl and points to one central problem of any metrical masterpiece: how can we all sing its praises in unison and squabble at the same time over what meter it was written in Osberg supports his claim, namely that the meter of Pearl is based on the half-line, with extensive statistical evidence. Bunt (pp. 175-184) addresses the general question of textual emendation in cases where non-aalax patterns appear to be authorial, and not the result of obvious and less-obvious corruption. In William of Palerne noncanonical alliteration appears to arise from overly strict adherence to the original French poem, which provides evidence that such alliteration is indeed authorial. Youmans (pp. 185-209) returns to the roots of Generative Metrics and uses Chaucer’s meter to compare the theoretical predication made by the Stress Maximum Principle (Halle and Keyser, 1966) and the Monosyllable Rule (Kiparsky, 1977). He examines lines in which syntactic inversion appears to be motivated by metrical considerations, the same methodology employed in Youmans (1983) and (1989) to analyze Shakespeare and Milton, respectively. He concludes that the underlying structure of Chaucer’s line is identical to Shakespeare’s. Duffel1 (pp. 210-218) retraces and completely rewrites the genealogy of the ‘(hen)decasyllable/pentameter’, or the X(I) as he abbreviates it, starting with its Romance roots and its development at the hands of Chaucer and Gower. Duggan (pp. 219-237), contra Osberg, argues that the meter of Pearl is iambic pentameter and proposes careful restoration of Pearl to see the poem behind the scribal text. By replacing words with synonyms, he shows that irregular lines can be made regular, thereby revealing the iambic meter of the poem. Despite the unity of the enterprise, opinions often diverge, and below 1 will discuss, and comment on, two specific controversies: the role of alliteration in Alliterative verse, and the structure of Chaucer’s meter, with some additional comments on metrical constraints and textual issues. Based on evidence from meter, Cable (1991) has shown that there are fundamental differences between the OE and ME varieties of Alliterative verse. This metrical evidence is corroborated by Borroff’s literary-critical analysis of the function of alliteration in the OE and ME. She also notes the important similarity between the epithets used to describe Beowulf and Gwain and those used to describe Odysseus and Aneas, which supports the idea of ME Alliterative verse as a secondary epic, in which a grander style is achieved by - perhaps imperfect - imitation of OE Alliterative verse (cf. C.S. Lewis, 1942). Some support for this claim is given by Matonis, who notes that expanded alliteration of the aaxlax type, rare in OE, is found in “highly stylized” (p. 139) passages of ME Alliterative verse. The more general question of how sound repetition might have been perceived by a ME audience cannot be dealt with here, but if alliteration became associated with elevated style, then it is possible that the repetition of the ‘good Gwain’ alliteration does not weakening the force of the adjective, as Borroff claims, but serves as a leitmotiv, set against the ‘leidmotiv’ of temptation the knight has to endure. All told, the evidence from several different perspectives shows that the Alliterative Revival is truly a revival, and

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not a continuation of OE verse, and that alliteration in ME may be more of a stylistic element than a structural one. This agreement about the difference between OE and ME alliteration is overshadowed by increasing disagreement about the structural role of alliteration in OE meter. McCully refutes the long-held view that alliterative verse is a structure-defining property of OE meter. He begins with the assumption that domain-final constraints serve as indicators of the constituent structure of verse lines. This can clearly be seen in verse with end-rhyme. Lines with end rhyme ‘begin differently’ and ‘end the same’ both at the syllable level of the rhyme word and at the level of the line. The demarcative function of Alliteration is not apparent, however, because alliteration of the final lift is not required. Moreover, alliteration cannot mark the beginning of the line either, because the first alliterating syllable need not be lineinitial. Something other than alliteration must demarcate the line in OE, and McCully concludes that the end of the line is signaled by the degree of variation permitted there (lift/resolved lift/or a lift followed by a single syllable). The conclusion McCully and Cable (1991) reach is clear, but for some no doubt iconoclastic: alliteration is merely a ‘superficial feature’ of the meter, i.e. using the term Alliterative verse to describe the structure of OE meter is akin to calling the meter of Shakespeare’s Sonnets ‘Rhyming meter’, and equally misleading. Rhyme and alliteration should thus be placed in the same category, i.e. a sound symbolism, used for expressive means. Yet alliteration is an essential part of OE verse, i.e. alliterating syllables may be ornamental, but at the same time they are not omamentals. A line of OE verse without any alliteration is, by all accounts, unmetrical. But is there really a difference between an essential ornament and a structural requirement, or are we just splitting hairs? The difficulty is in part terminological. For example, the caesura is a structural component of French verse, while a caesura in English is an optional, or omamental, feature of the line (cf. Duffel1 on the crucial role of the caesura in the historical development of English pentameter). It is possible that Alliteration is a formal component of OE verse, but not a structural requirement of the meter. This possibility is explored by Matonis, and the tentative conclusion is that the Alliteration and meter may be inseparable, yet independent, cf. McIntosh (1982). As an analogy, sonnets without rhyme are not sonnets, but fourteen lines of Blank verse; the meter is iambic pentameter but the verse has changed. This conclusion brings new problems with it however. Why do we not find non-alliterating ‘bare verse’ in OE? If alliteration was not a structural property of the meter, how does this affect the relationship between OE and ME alliterative verse? Additional research, in particular within the broader perspective of Germanic verse as a whole, is clearly needed. The conclusion McCully makes hinges on the assumption that the line is an invariable structural component of meter, and here too there will no doubt be opposition from some comers, although the assumption is sound. Irrespective of this, there appears to have been a shift in the composition of the line in the ME period. The disappearance of Types D and E, coupled with the requirement that “[tlhe second half line must contain . . . a single, final unstressed syllable” (Cable, 1991: 86), means that the possibilities at the end of the line are greatly curtailed in ME alliter-

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ating verse. In addition, Osberg (1993) notes in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics that the line in eME accentual verse is more syntactically marked than in OE, since enjambment is rare. Moreover, in ME Alliterative verse the stich is less salient, due to the decreasing occurrence of a strong caesura. All of these factors point to a more clear demarcation of the line in ME verse. There is evidence for yet another shift within ME verse. Studies of Modem English iambic pentameter have shown that there is a general ‘negative’ constraint on the occurrence of stressed syllables is weak positions, but that unstressed syllables can freely occur in strong positions. (N.B. I am going to use the terms ‘constraint’ and ‘filter’ interchangeably, and not as termini technici of a particular theory.) Cable, McCully and Minkova present cases where there are co-occurrence or positive constraints on weak positions. In OE, the number of syllables in the weak positions in the line cannot vary freely, but interacts with requirements in other weak positions. For early iambic meter, Minkova notes that the W position of the initial foot of Orm’s line must contain either a clitic or a light prefix, i.e. a positive constraint on Weak. Zonneveld (1998) shows that the earliest example of iambic meter in Dutch, the 12th century tetrameter poem Sint Lutgard, does not allow stressed syllables in W, but also does not allow schwa to be in a Strong position, unlike Modem Dutch, where Strong positions are unconstrained, as in English. These examples are interesting for two reasons. First, from a theoretical point of view, we see meters that restrict both Weak and Strong positions simultaneously. Second, the existence of such constraints may provide a means of explaining the historical shift to iambic pentameter in terms of a weakening of the constraints on Strong positions and the increasing importance of constraints on Weak. How this shift relates to the shift from strong-stress to syllabic verse remains an open question, but there is good evidence that there may be connection. A meter that restricts stressed syllables to Strong positions must allow more than one syllable in Weak positions, otherwise it is impossible to incorporate prepositional phrases into the meter, e.g. ‘love in the night’. A syllabic meter that restricts Weak positions must allow unstressed syllables in Strong for the same reason, e.g. ‘in the night’. By reference to Joyce Kilmer’s famous line ‘I think that I shall never see// A poem lovely as a tree’, Minkova points to the central question of metrics since Jakobson, namely how to define the correspondence between the verse design often represented with a (generative) hierarchical tree - and the verse instance, a line of the poem. To expand the analogy, meter is like landscape gardening: the existing flora is pruned, groomed, and trimmed in order to create some desired effect. The geometrically regular French gardens, and their meanderingly recursive English counterparts are strikingly different, as are French and English meters. Nonetheless. several authors have claimed that the French decasyllable and English iambic pentameter share the same verse design (Biggs, 1996; Duffell, 1999). In other words, the differences are certainly there on the surface, but the underlying structures show a large degree of correspondence. In EHM Duffel1 (p. 215) discusses how Chaucer “transformed the endecasillabo into the iambic pentameter”, but was this transformation at the level of the abstract pattern or in terms of the association conventions? Cable, following earlier work (Cable, 1991) argues that Chaucer’s meter is funda-

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mentally different from Shakespeare’s at the level of verse design, while Youmans contends that the poets share the same verse design. Guthrie (1988) lists several characteristics that distinguish Chaucer’s metrical style from later poets. First, Chaucer’s line is ‘lighter’, i.e. the number of lexical stresses pro line is lower. Second, rising sequences of three syllables occur (A good wif . . .) , although these do not occur in Shakespeare, while sequences of four rising syllables (To me, fair friend, . . .), common in later poets, are rare in Chaucer. A sequence of four rising stresses is the tell-tale sign of foot-based iambic verse, according to Cable, and since these cadences are lacking in Chaucer’s works, Chaucer’s meter is not foot-based, but strictly alternating. Youmans, while acknowledging that Chaucer’s meter is more regular, argues that the metrical variations that Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare employ are so similar that they must derive from a common source, i.e. the same abstract pattern. Statistics from Tarlinskaja (1976) and Guthrie (1988) show that Chaucer’s tetrameter and pentameter verse are both highly regular, and this regularity can, if strictly adhered to in performance, be monotonous or ‘thumping’. Similar rhythmic epithets have been heaped on German meter, which does not have rising cadences either. In fact, such cadences do not occur in other Germanic languages according to Jespersen (1900), although they do sometimes occur in Modem Dutch meter. Rising cadences in English result primarily from adjective+noun sequences. As Bjorklund (1978) shows, the German inflectional system leads to a more even distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables than found in English, particularly in adjective+noun sequences: ein g&es n&es BLich vs. a gbod, ne’w hdok (for additional factors see Redford, 2000). Now, if Middle English, or at least the English that Chaucer was writing, still had inflectional , and Cable (1991) has presented strong arguments that support this, then we would expect Chaucer’s meter to be more regular. Moreover, rising cadences would be rare, because Adj+Noun sequences would be separated by an inflectional ending, as they are in German and often are in Dutch. However, this does not explain why three syllable cadences occur, but they can be found in MnE poets, e.g. Milton ‘With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’vergrown’, Lycidas, 40. The lack of four syllable rising cadences also explains why Chaucer’s line is lighter. Consider a line that contains a prepositional phrase, such as ‘in the night’. Either the preposition or the determiner will be in a Strong position of the line, and thus the number of lexical stresses in the line will be less than five - a well-known tendency of iambic pentameter that simply follows from the distribution of non-lexical words in English. The only way to place additional stresses in the line is to add lexical stresses in weak metrical positions, as in the opening line of Browning’s Meeting at night ‘The gray sea and the long black land’. Without recourse to rising cadences, there will often be less than five lexical stresses in the line, which leads in the long run to a lighter line overall. Thus the lightness of Chaucer’s line and its regularity appear to stem from the same source, the inflectional system of ME (or Chaucer’s usage), which leads to a more even distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables. In sum, the distinction between ‘alternating’ and ‘foot based’ meters can be the result of different metrical filters and not necessarily stem from two distinct abstract patterns (cf. Zonneveld, 1998).

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The textual ground that all of these discussions rest on is full of fault-lines. It appears that scribes and copyists when attempting to write verbatim ac litteratim, did not always read for content or scan ‘their’ lines when writing. Osberg’s and Duggan’s contributions are important, because they provide an excellent example of the central role that textual criticism can play in metrical analyses. They present evidence that the meter of Pearl is stichic or iambic tetrameter, respectively. These radically different conclusions hinge on whether one assumes that one should respect the written text or whether textual emmendation should be permitted in order to ‘renovate the text’ (the arguments pro and contra are reminiscent of those surrounding the Sistine Chapel renovations). They do agree that the meter contains four beats, and four-beat verse is even in Modem English difficult to pin down at times (Attridge, 1982). Taken line-by-line Blake’s Tyger, for example, has eighteen sevensyllable lines, i.e. they are either iambic or trochaic tetrameter, and six lines (stripes?) of iambic tetrameter. Given the clear examples of iambic tetrameter, it would be natural to assume the whole poem is iambic tetrameter with a majority of headless lines. Nonetheless Tyger has a strong trochaic rhythm that leads to a balladlike recitation style that is easy to fall into, which is enhanced by the numerous bisyllabic words with initial stress. The meter of Pearl is not that of the Tyger, but it is possible that the meter in both cases cannot clearly be defined as one or the other, because the poet was using all of the possibilities of four-beat meter simultaneously, in both cases to general acclaim. The debate will certainly continue. Lastly, the editors have done a truly meticulous job. Aside from the floating extra branch in the tree on page 101, the only other error I found was that among the list of Chaucer editions, 1. Robinson is given, while the F.N. Robinson edition is intended, which does not appear in the references. In sum EHM is a collection of papers, individual in scope, that, taken together, provide a comprehensive look at historical metrics in English and at central questions of metrical theory. Well-written, well-edited, EHM provides a summary of important research and an impetus for more.

References Attridge, Derek, 1982. The rhythms of English poetry. London: Longmans. Biggs, Henry, 1996, A statistical analysis of the metrics of the classical French decasyllable and the classic French alexandrine. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Bjorklund, Beth, 1978. A study in comparative prosody: German and English iambic pentameter. Stuttgart: Heinz. Creed, Robert, 1990. Reconstructing the rhythm of ‘Beowulf’. Columbia: University of Columbia Press. Cable, Thomas, 1991. The English alliterative tradition. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Duffel], Martin, 1991. The Romance (Hen)decasyllable: An exercise in comparative metrics. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College. Duffell, Martin, 1999. Modem metrical theory and the Verso de Arte Mayor. (Papers in Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar 10). London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College. Guthrie, Steven, 1988. Prosody and the study of Chaucer: A generative reply to Halle-Keyser. The Chaucer Review 23( 1), 30-49.

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Halle, Morris and S. Jay Keyser, 1966. Chaucer and the study of prosody. College English 28, 187-219. Jespersen, Otto, 1933. Notes on Metre. Linguistica Levin and Munsksgaard: Copenhagen. Reprinted in H. Gross (ed.), The Structure of Verse: Modem Essays on Prosody Greenwech, Corm/: Fawcett, 1966. Kiparsky, Paul, 1977. The rhythmic structure of English verse. Linguistic Inquiry 8, 189-247. Kuhn, Hans, 1993. Zur Wortstellung und -betonung im Altgermanischen. Beitrlge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 57, l-109. Lewis, C.S., 1942. A preface to paradise lost. London: Oxford University Press. McIntosh, Angus, 1982. Early Middle English alliterative verse. In: D. Lawton (ed.), Middle English alliterative poetry and its literary background. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer. Obst, Wolfgang, 1987. Der Rhythmus des ‘Beowulf’: Eine Akzent- und Takttheorie. (Anglistische Forschungen 187). Heidelberg: Winter. Osberg, Richard, 1993. English Prosody: Middle English. In: A. Preminger and T. Brogan (eds.), The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Redford, Michael, 2000. Submitted to proceedings of the first international conference of meter, rhythm, and performance (title subject to change). Linguistik International. New York: Lang. Russom, Geoffrey, 1987. Old English meter and linguistic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarlinskaja, Marina, 1976. English verse: Theory and history. The Hague: Mouton. Youmans, Gilbert, 1983. Generative tests for generative meter. Language 59, 67-92. Youmans, Gilbert, 1989. Milton’s meter. In: P. Kiparsky and G. Youmans (eds.), Rhythm and meter, 341-379. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Zonneveld, Wim, 1998. Lutgart, Willem and Geoffrey: A study of 13th century Dutch metre. Ms., University of Utrecht.