Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Moloney, Michael F.
1973.
Donne: Songs and Sonets.
p.
207.
Article contents
Donne's Prosody
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
From the Elizabethan prosodists we shall obtain no more than a few scattered hints concerning Donne's versification. Prosodists are notoriously conservative, and the Elizabethans are no exception. Putten-ham, in spite of his evident pleasure in the sound of verse, still places his confidence in the final arbitration of the eye; and it is thus that he comments on the diagram of a stanza-form: “most times your occular proportion doeth declare the nature of the audible; for if it please the eare well, the same represented by delineation to the view pleaseth the eye well, and e converso.” This ocular prosody leads him to say that “it is somewhat more tolerable to help the rime by false orthographie then to leave an unplesant dissonance to the eare by keeping trewe orthographie and loosing the rime, as for example it is better to rime Dore with Restore then in his truer orthographie, which is Doore.” Even with the rise of lyric and of dramatic blank verse this attitude does not disappear. Campion, for instance, makes the sensible remark that normal accent “is diligently to be observ'd, for chiefely by the accent in any language the true value of the sillables is to be measured.” And he knows that “we must esteeme our sillables as we speake, not as we write; for the sound of them in a verse is to be valued, and not their letters.” Yet he inconsistently admits length by position, as in Trumpington.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944
References
1 “A Defence of Womens Inconstancy, ”Paradoxes and Problemes.
2 In Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), ii, 89.
3 Ibid., ii, 85.
4 Ibid., ii, 351.
5 Ibid., ii, 352.
6 Ibid., ii, 351.
7 Ibid., ii, 334–338.
8 Ibid., ii, 330–331.
9 It may not be followed by an iambic foot; “for an Iambick beginning with a single short sillable, and the other ending before with the like, would too much drinke up the verse if they came immediately together ”(ii, 337). This approach is that of the purist, intent on keeping his feet apart in little tight units. There is really not much fundamental difference from the attitude of Puttenham, who is disturbed by Surrey's alexandrine with a stress-shift in the first foot:
“Salomon Davids sonne, king of Ierusalem.”
Of this he says, “having this sharpe accent uppon the Antepenultima as it hath, by which occasion it runnes like a Dactill, and carries the two later sillables away so speedily as it seemes but one foote in our vulgar measure, and by that meanes makes the verse seeme but of eleven sillables, which odnesse is nothing pleasant to the eare ”(Elizabethan Critical Essays, ii, 76).
10 Daniel, the other important Elizabethan prosodist, cites an example “which sheweth that two … Trochies … will not succeede in the third and fourth place of the Verse ”(A Defence of Rhyme; reprinted in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ii, 378). But this is to illustrate that every observant versifier finds in our language “what numbers best fitte the Nature of her Idiome, and the proper places destined to such accents as she will not let in to any other roomes then in those for which they were borne. ”We may well be sorry that Daniel did not elaborate on this empirical approach; but it is clear, at least, that he does not rule out the possibility of a trochee's being admitted elsewhere in the line.
11 Conversations with Drummond, ed. Herford and Simpson (Oxford, 1925), i,133. Because of the unknown circumstances that evoked this statement, and many another in the Conversations, we are certainly justified if we hesitate to accept them at face-value. Drummond, like Boswell, was evidently prodding his man into over-statements. And then we do not know what questions Jonson is answering, or whether before, during, or after drinking.
12 For useful collections of this criticism see W. F. Melton, The Rhetoric of John Donne's Verse (Baltimore, 1906), Chapter I; and A. H. Nethercot, “The Reputation of John Donne as a Metrist, ”Sewanee Review, xxx (1922), 463–174.
13 See J. B. Mayor's Chapters on English Metre (London, 1886), Chapters IV and v.
14 The Rhythm of Speech (Glasgow 1923). Cf. also P. Verrier, Essai sur les Principes de la Métrique Anglaise (Paris, 1909), the section on “Rhythmique”; M. A. Bayfield, The Measures of the Poets (Cambridge University Press, 1919); E, A. Sonnenschein, Rhythm (Oxford, 1925).
15 Time-measurement, attractive though it is in some respects, cannot wisely be used in historical prosody, where we are much more certain of the accent of a word than of its potential duration.
16 The materials for this prosody have been drawn from all of Donne's verse, but with special attention to the Satires: for in them we find the concentrated use of almost all of the variations that are employed more sparingly throughout the rest of the verse.
17 All references to Donne's verse are to Grierson's two-volume edition (Oxford, 1912); the references are to volume, page, and line, respectively. When illustrations are not from the Satires, the title is given; otherwise not.
18 Cf. The Winter's Tale, i, ii, 151:
“Are you mov'd my lord? No, in good earnest.”
19 Perhaps “teare ”has two syllables, and also “sweare ”(i, 145, 13).
20 Pierre Legouis, Donne the Craftsman (Paris, 1928), p. 90.
21 Donne the Craftsman, p. 86.
22 “The Poetry of the Mind, ”Essays in Criticism: Second Series (University of California Publications in English, 1934), p. 37.
23 Milton's Prosody (Oxford, 1921), p. 40.
24 The lines which in Section 1 are described as initial truncation together with feminine ending, may as reasonably be considered five successive stress-shifts.
25 An English Prosody (Cambridge, 1928). The only noticeable inconsistency is Young's half-implication of time in his accentual system. For this see pages 59–61, 74–80. Another prosodist, remarkably sensible, clear, and consistent, is Mrs. Enid Hamer, The Metres of English Poetry (London, 1930). Her ear is very good, and usually reliable—a rare thing in prosodists.
26 Puttenham, in his second chapter “Of Ornament ”(The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Willcock and Walker, 1936), defines elision thus: “Your swallowing or eating up one letter by another is when two vowels meete, whereof th'ones sound goeth into other ”(p. 162). One of his illustrations is “t'attaine ”for “to attaine.”
27 Another of Puttenham's examples is “sor' and smart ”for “sorrow and smart.”
28 It is interesting to note that in neither of the Anniversaries do apostrophes appear where elision is doubtful.
29 Grierson's critical apparatus supplies many examples.
30 See also Cornus, 66, 415, 605, 743, 779; and Paradise Lost, viii, 649; x, 468, 722, 758, 874, 927, 931.
31 1 am no longer sure about the scansion of this Une. Donne is difficult. And a line like this doesn't yield easily to the simplified analysis necessary for presenting the basic rules of the versification.
32 For a companion study see my “Meter and Meaning in Donne's Verse, ”appearing in the spring (1944) issue of Sewanee Review. For some of the possible relationships between prosodic study and larger critical problems, see my “Donne and the Couplet, ”PMLA, lvii (1942), 676–696; “Donne's Harshness and the Elizabethan Tradition, ”in the July (1944) issue of Studies in Philology.
- 1
- Cited by