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The Basic Elements of Appreciating English
Poetry
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》
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:
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.
Cannon in/ front of them,
V
olley‘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
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
foot
（不完整音步）
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）
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
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skinning swallows.
---Tennyson
Whereat with
blade, with bloody blameful blade,
He
bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.
---Shakespeare
―Consonant cluster‖
(
辅音连缀
)
―internal or
hidden alliteration‖ (
暗头韵
)
as in
―Here in the long unlovely street‖
(Tennyson)
The
Scian & the Teian muse,
The hero‘s
harp, the love‘s lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse.
---Byron
b)
Assonance
(
腹韵
/
元音叠韵
/<
/p>
半谐音
)
：
th
e
repetition
of
similar
or
identical
vowel
sounds in a line ending with different
consonant sounds.
eg.
Do not go gentle into that
night
Old age should burn and
rave at close of day.
Rage, rage
against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark
is right,
Because their words have
forked no lightning they
Do not go
gentle into that night.
c)
Consonance
(
假韵
):
the
repetition
of
the
ending
consonant
sounds
with
different
preceding vowels of two or more words
in a line.
eg.
At once a voice arose among
The
bleak twigs overhead
In a full-
hearted evensong
Of joy
illimited.
---Hardy
End rhyme: lines in a poem end in
similar or identical
stressed syllables.
a)
Perfect rhyme
Perfect rhyme (in two or
more words) occurs in the following three
conditions:
identical stressed vowel
sounds (lie--high, stay--play);
the
same consonants after the identical stressed
vowels (park--lark, fate-- late);
different consonants preceding the
stressed vowels (first
–
burst);
follow
—
swallow
(perfect rhyme)
b)
imperfect/ half rhyme: the stressed vowels in two
or more words are the same, but the
consonant sounds after and preceding
are different.
eg.
fern
—
bird,
faze
—
late,
like
—
right
c)
Masculine and feminine rhyme
eg.
Sometimes when I‘m
lonely,
Don‘t
know why,
Keep thinking I won‘t be
lonely
By and by.
---Hughes
The
comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As
then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem‘d a vision; I would ne‘er
have striven…
---Shelley
Rhyme scheme
(
韵式
)
a) Running
rhyme scheme (
连续韵
)
two neighbouring lines rhymed in aa
bb
cc
dd:
eg.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In
the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On
what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize
the fire?
b) Alternating
rhyme scheme (
交叉韵
)
rhymed every other line in a b a b
c d c d:
eg.
Shall I compare thee to a summer‘s
day?
Thou art more
lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the
darling buds of May,
And summer‘s
lease hath all too short a date:
---Shakespeare
c) enclosing rhyme scheme
(
首尾韵
)
In
a quatrain, the first and the last rhymed, and the
second and the third rhymed in a
b
b
a:
eg. When you
are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,
take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft
look
Your eyes had once, and of their
shadows deep;
---W. B. Yeats
D.
Form of poetry ( stanzaic form)
a) couplet: a
stanza of two lines with similar end rhymes:
eg.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not
the Pierian Spring.
b) heroic couplet: a
rhyming couplet of iambic pentameter:
eg. O could I
flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme:
---Denham
Then share thy pain, allow that sad
relief;
Ah, more than
share it, give me all thy grief.
---Pope
c)
Triplet / tercet: a unit or group of three lines,
usu. rhymed
eg. He clasps the crags
with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the
azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath
him crawls:
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