[Golias]

In the lines below there appear twelve instances of three adjacent syllables which, according to most dictionaries, are unaccented. But are all those unaccented syllables also unstressed? If not, are these longer lines necessarily tetrameters rather than trimeters?


Synopsis of a Shakespeare Comedy

Though she brought a considerable fortune
Kate was considered unmarriageable
Because an insuperable portion
Of shrewishness lay in her.
With such an immalleable nature,
her conduct so incorrigible,
and such an unmanageable temper,
No suitable suitor could win her.

A disreputable rogue from Verona
With audacity nearly illimitable
And a most inimitable persona
Set on to woo her.
Objectionably brash were his ruses;
His actions wholly despicable.
By unconscionable tricks and abuses
He did subdue her.




[This message has been edited by Golias (edited January 09, 2003).]

[Roger Slater]

Wiley, it's very difficult to scan these lines, which I'm tempted to say aren't really metrical (or just barely). Here's my take on the first few lines:


THOUGH she BROUGHT a conSID'rable FORtune

This could also be heard as starting with an anapest. Indeed, this might be more natural. If the poet didn't want an anapest, he could have written "Although".

I don't hear three unstressed syllables in a row because of elision.

KATE was conSIDered unMARriageaBLE

I don't see how you can avoid a metrical beat on the final syllable.

BeCAUSE an inSUP'rable PORtion

Again, the elision avoids the problem.


Of SHREWishNESS lay IN her.

[Carol Taylor]

Inmalleable must be a typo for unmalleable. Of course you can't scan the lines as accentual-syllablic meter, since they have three adjacent unaccented syllables in most of the lines. But as accentual verse it has its own imperfect rhythm, created by the recurring hypersyllables. If you do anything over and over long enough you form a pattern or rhythm. In my opinion the rhythm is spoiled by the fact that the two stanzas don't match, the second having dimeter 4th and 8th lines while the first has trimeter lines in the same position.

To tame this shrew, I'd suggest either making the 4th and 8th lines of the first stanza dimeter in order to create a pattern with the second stanza, or else making the 4th line of the second stanza trimeter and leaving the final line as dimeter for effect, a sudden break from pattern. The effect is diluted by the earlier short line.

Carol

[Golias]

Rog, elision helps with some of the 12 words, but not with such as illimitable, questionable, despicable, and there are numerous other not included here -- such as pitiable.

Carol, the word is imMALleable, not inmalleable. It's probably used most in spelling bees. Heres a published bee-list:

fantastically, evocative, crispation, copious, garrulous, campanologist, duodenitis, kinetosis, indubitable, gazetteer, gibleh, urceolate, utilitarian, technophobia, biliousness, velitation, anneal, ardoise, hennin, bouquiniste, braggadocio, abecedarius, horologist, turophile, immalleable, spiedino, xerocolous.

Symmetry of form and rhythm as between the two stanzas is a little beside the point, since it's not a poem-poem but only a way to show some of these problematical words in a metrical context, to see how they run.

I'm hoping to get views on this kind of problem from either or both of our poets lariat or from anyone who has studied and dealt with it. These words can be and are used in A/S poetry: For example in Bryant's "To a Waterfowl" we find:

There is a Power, whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost.

By the pattern of the line, Bryant, at first reading, seems to give all three quick unaccented syllables the same stress as one unstressed syllable:

the DES/ ert AND/ il LIM/ itable AIR,

a tetrameter. But I think the poet must have intended a pentameter:

the DES/ert AND/ il LIM/i TA/ble AIR

which accords with the metrical pattern of the other stanzas of the poem. The preceding stanza goes:

Seek'st thou the plashy bank (4 beats)
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,(5)
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink(5)
On the chaféd ocean side (4).

So, by the larger metrical pattern, stress would seem to be laid somewhat unnaturally on the penult of "illimitable." But can or should such alteration of customary pronunciation be forced by the mere metric pattern, with rhyme not involved and the line's rhythm little affected by pronouncing all three syllables with great rapidity as one would in ordinary speech.?

G/W






[This message has been edited by Golias (edited January 10, 2003).]

[Clive Watkins]

So, by the metrical pattern, stress would seem to be laid somewhat unnaturally on the penult of "illimitable." But can or should such alteration of customary pronunciation be forced by the mere metric pattern, with rhyme not involved and the line's rhythm little affected by pronouncing all three syllables with great rapidity as one would in ordinary speech?


What does "ordinary speech" mean here? Despite what the dictionaries, including the OED, indicate, I do in fact pronounce "illimitable" (and words of similar pattern) in "ordinary speech" as having two stresses, though of different weights, particularly when I am speaking or reading carefully. (I am someone who tends to speak rather rapidly.) What this suggests is that, even in non-metrical contexts, much depends on the pace of utterance.

Pace of utterance is affected not just by extrinsic, non-verbal factors (such as wanting to be sure that one’s audience hears every word) but also by factors - cues, let us call them - inherent in the utterance itself. This is too big a topic for a short note, but, to put things in simplistic terms, such factors include the nature of the syntax, the ratio of content words to form words and of consonants to vowels. The existence of a metrical context seems to me another such factor, one likely to prompt a more measured utterance and the kind of pronunciation we are discussing. I see nothing odd in this.

Clive Watkins

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

"Some syllables, when adjacent to a stressed syllable, and shown with a full vowel, may actually be said with a secondary stress even though such stress is not shown in the pronunciation."

Random House Webster's College Dictionary - Pronunciation Guide

(i lim'i t@ b@l) - sorry, @ stands in for the inverted e

With audA /city NEAR/ ly il LIM/ i ta ble ?



[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited January 10, 2003).]

[Golias]

Unfortunately, JGH, in this case the poet seems to stress a syllable once removed from the accented syllable, not one adjacent to it, in order to make the line seem to be a pentameter.

Roger, I think there's much to what you say, and a good reader might well slow the pace a bit so as to say il-LIM-i-TA-ble. But would one do the same for such a word as PIT-i-a-ble (PIT-i-A-ble?)if it did not fall at the end of a line so it could be read "PIT-i-a-BLE?

In his "Bridge of Sighs," Thomas Hood used "pitiful" where, in his day, he should have written "pitiable"

"Oh, it was PITiFUL (or PIT-i-a-BLE),
Near a whole city full;
Home she had none"

Pitiful(archaic)=full of pity (The Lord is pitiful)
Pitiable(archaic)=deserving of pity. (Man is pitiable.)

But the definitions are since reversed and Hood is long dead, so what can we do?


W/G



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited January 10, 2003).]

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Golias,

At the risk of illuminating my ignorance further...

I'd have to say that the poem is obviously accentual in nature, in which case whatever secondary stresses might be present are not accented. Auden sometimes blurred the lines when doing this sort of thing (flirted at the edge of accentual and accentual-syllabic writing), but this poem, this type of accentual verse, requires only that the primary stresses receive accents. So your question, "But are all those unaccented syllables also unstressed," would be properly answered, imo, as "No. Some of those unaccented syllables might receive a stress because of normal speech rhythms, but even so the stresses are much weaker than the primary stresses and do not interfere with the accentual meter." Such secondary stressing is not "demoted" in an accentual scheme--it's simply not accented, even if still stressed lightly.

Some of the lines in the poem you posted could be read as tetrameter, but the context in which they appear, the poem, would argue against such a reading. E.g., theoretical rhymes on "unmarriageable" and "incorrigible," on either the penultimate syllable or the last, or even on the middle syllable, would not be true rhymes; they'd be exact repetitions; on the second syllables of the words, they are slant rhymes. (immalleable & unmanageable follow the slanting path of these, beginning with the second syllable, although immalleable might be considered a true rhyme with these on the penultimate syllable.) "insuperable portion" & "considerable fortune" show the play happening in a similar way, because they are slant rhymes if begun on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable of the adjectives in those pairings...were one to attempt a tetrameter interpretation. L4 of S1 might even be read as accentual tetrameter; the slant rhyming between L4 & L5, and between L4 & L8 is just hilarious and also might confuse an over-conscientious reading.

I mentioned Auden. heh. The polysyllabic words in question could be used in positions throughout a poem in such a way that the poem could be read as accentual trimeter or as accentual-syllablic tetrameter, depending on how one treated the secondary stresses. If in every duplicitous line in the example the poet positioned the secondary stresses where they might be promoted in context without interfering with a duple meter, one could use the context for an acc-syl tetrameter reading or choose to ignore the secondary stresses for an accentual trimeter reading. (The same duplicitous effect might be achieved by using non-content words such as prepositions in positions where they might be promoted or unaccented--as long as the strong stresses in each line, in content words, still added up to "3".)

Curtis.




[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited January 10, 2003).]

[robert mezey]

There's no way of answering those questions about those "Synopsis" lines--the meter is too awkward and irregular to
know where the accents are supposed to go in each line.
As for the other matter, I don't know how many times it must
be said, but YES, the meter does affect the pronunciation to
some extent and it MUST be heard--at some level. Since the
line is a pentameter, the ear must hear an accent on the penultimate syllable of "Illimitable." But the ear needs
merely to be satisfied and the accent need be barely audible.
In my notation,

The desert and illimitable air o S o s o S o s o S

Reading or saying the line aloud, there are only three syllables that are cleearly stressed--but there are five accents, as there must be, and in this line they fall just
where they are expected. These are really elementary matters. A wonderful example of a line with only three
strong stresses is the next-to-last line of "A Silken Tent"
in which the gust Frost is speaking of is enacted by the
meter and the consonant sounds:

In the capriciousness of summer air s o o S o s o S o S

The last three lines of the poem are full of such drama of
sound and word order:

And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

And the poem dramatizes that slight bondage with that inversion in the last line, the only clear inversion in the
poem. Frost could have written the line another way without
the inversion (he could do anything he wanted, he had that kind of mastery) but he wanted the inversion, which is the verbal result of the verbal gust.

[Golias]

One says the metrical pattern prevails, though perhaps barely. Another says natural speech rhythms (whatever those may be) prevail. Still another may argue, with Larkin, that the poet writes only to please himself; and that readers, critics, and everyone else, don't matter---or stronger words to that effect.

So the argument goes round and round, and it comes out...where? Maybe nowhere?

W/G