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,” or so-called “barfoot” analogy; and the “acoustic,” based on measurements of prosodic phenomena with precise instruments like the kymograph and oscillograph. The difficulty with the graphic theory of conventional foot divisions is obvious to most metrists; it is a crude attempt to fit, in Procrustean fashion if need be, the English accentual system to a quantitative framework. As recent students have shown, any such attempt is at odds with the facts of the English language. English meter does not depend upon syllable length but upon periodic stress (loudness). Words like “long” and “short” have no real meaning in view of what we have learned about English phonemic structure.