July 1, 1956
A Note on Meter
What does meter do in a poem? It is already a kind of form before the poet begins his poem. And what happens finally to meter? Is it absorbed into […]
July 1, 1956
Mr. Stein on Donne
I should like to question Professor Stein’s interpretation of the meter of Donne’s Elegy X (Kenyon Review, XIII, 261-2, and reprinted in expanded form in the present issue). Mr. Stein’s […]
July 1, 1956
Donne’s Prosody
(From an essay in the Kenyon Review of Spring 1951.) How shall we read the last three words of this line?— So, if I dreame I have you, I have […]
July 1, 1956
From Linguistics to Criticism
I. (As in the Kenyon Review of Autumn, 1951.) An Outline of English Structure by George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith, Jr. Studies in Linguistics: Occasional Papers 3. Battenburg Press. […]
July 1, 1956
Robert Frost’s “Mowing”: An Inquiry into Prosodic Structure
I. Three Theories of Prosody In Theory of Literature, Professors Wellek and Warren consider the weaknesses of three kinds of metrical analysis: the “graphic,” derived from classical metrics; the “musical,” […]
July 1, 1956
The Strange Music of English Verse
It is strange that a generation of critics so sensitive and ingenious as ours should have turned out very backward, indeed phlegmatic, when it comes to hearing the music of […]