Full Description
25th Annniversary Edition, with a new preface by the author
Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucer's time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech, and examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us.
Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction
Part One: Iambic Verse
1
Metrical Norm and Rhythmical Modulation
2
Scansion and Metrical Variation
. Principles of Scansion
. The Principal Iambic Meters
. The Three Common Metrical Variations in Iambic Verse: The Trochaic Substitution
in the First Foot, the Mid-line Trochaic Substitution, and the Feminine Ending
. Less Common Trochaic Substitutions and Trochees That Maybe Are Not Trochees
. Loose Iambic-Iambic Verse with Anapestic Substitutions
. Other Variants: Divided Lines, Clipped Lines, Broken-Backed Lines,
and Feminine Caesuras
3
Additional Sources of Rhythmical Modulation, Including Enjambment,
Caesural Pause, and Word Length
4
The Story of Elision, Including the Famous Rise, Troublesome Reign,
and Tragical Fall of the Metrical Apostrophe
. The Practice and Conventions of Elision
. Elision and Changing Views about Syllable Count
. How Real Is Elision? And What Are We, Finally, to Think of It?
5
Boundless Wealth from a Finite Store:Meter and Grammar
Part Two: Other Matters, Other Meters
6
Rhyme
. The Background and History of Rhyme
. The Two Common Types of Rhyme in English-
Full and Partial-and Some of Their Varieties
. The Use of Rhyme
Seven
Stanzas
8
Trochaic and Trisyllabic Meters
9
Alternative Modes of Versification in English
. Accentual Verse
. Syllabic Verse
. Free Verse
. Imitation-Classical Verse
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Permissions and Copyrights
Index
