The Basic Elements of Appreciating English Poetry
1.What is poetry?
Poetry is the expression of Impassioned feeling in language.
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
“Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the imagination.”
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty.
Poetry is the image of man and nature.
“诗言志，歌咏言。” ---《虞书》
“诗言志之所以也。在心为志，发言为诗。情动于中而行于言，言之不足，则嗟叹之；嗟叹之不足，故咏歌之；咏歌之不足，不知手之舞之，足之蹈之也。情发于声；声成文，谓之音。” ---《诗·大序》
“诗是由诗人对外界所引起的感觉，注入了思想与情感，而凝结了形象，终于被表现出来的一种‘完成’的艺术。” ---艾青：《诗论》 2.The Sound System of English Poetry
a. The prosodic features
Prosody (韵律)---the study of the rhythm, pause, tempo, stress and pitch features of a language.
Chinese poetry is syllable-timed, English poetry is stress-timed.
Stress: The prosody of English poetry is realized by stress. One stressed syllable always comes together with one or more unstressed syllables.
eg. Tiger, /tiger, /burning /bright
In the /forest /of the/ night,
What im/mortal /hand or /eye
Could frame thy/ fearful /symme/try? ---W. Blake
Length: it can produce some rhetorical and artistic effect.
eg. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The Ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
---Thomas Gray
Long vowels and diphthongs make the poem slow, emotional and solemn; short vowels quick, passionate, tense and exciting.
Pause: it serves for the rhythm and musicality of poetry.
b. Meter or measure (格律)
poem---stanza/strophe---line/verse---foot---arsis + thesis;
Meter or measure refers to the formation way of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
Four common meters:
小世界理论
a) Iambus; the iambic foot (抑扬格)
eg. She walks/ in beau/ty, like/ the night
Of cloud /less climes/ and star/ry skies;
And all/ that’s best /of dark/ and bright
Meet in /her as /pect and /her eyes. ---Byron
b) Trochee; the trochaic foot（扬抑格） eg. Never /seek to/ tell thy/ love,
Love that/ never/ told can/ be. ---Blake
c) Dactyl; the dactylic foot （扬抑抑格）
eg. Cannon to/ right of them,
Cannon to/ left of them.
商务路路通 Cannon in/ front of them,
Volley’d and/ thunder’d. ---Tennyson
d) Anapaest; the anapestic foot（抑抑扬格）
eg. Break,/ break, /break,
On thy cold /grey stones,/ O sea!
And I would /that my tongue/ could utter
分配系数
The thought/ that arise /in me. ---Tennyson
c) Other meters
Amphibrach, the amphibrachic foot (抑扬抑格)；
Spondee, the spondaic foot(扬扬格)；
Pyrrhic, the pyrrhic foot (抑抑格)；
d) Actalectic foot (完整音步) and Cactalectic footDASIC（不完整音步）
并行空间
eg. Rich the / treasure,
Sweet the / pleasure. (actalectic foot)
Tiger,/ tiger, /burning /bright,
In the/ forest/ of the/ night. (cactalectic foot )
e) Types of foot
monometer(一音步)
dimeter（二音步）
trimeter（三音步）
tetrameter（四音步）
pentameter（五音步）
思凡mv hexameter（六音步）
heptameter（七音步）
octameter（八音步）
We have iambic monometer, trochaic tetrameter, iambic
pentameter, anapaestic trimeter, etc., when the number of
foot and meter are taken together in a poem.
C. Rhyme
When two or more words or phrases contain an identical
or similar vowel sound, usually stressed, and the
consonant sounds that follow the vowel sound are
identical and preceded by different consonants, a rhyme
occurs.
It can roughly be divided into two types:
internal rhyme and end rhyme
Internal rhyme
a) alliteration: the repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in successive or closely associated syllables, esp. stressed syllables.
eg. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.
---Coleridge
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