A handbook of poetics, for students of English verse

Francis Barton Gummere

Sujets

• Poetics
• Versification

Informations

• Publié par: les_archives_du_savoir
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

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HANDBOOK OF POETICS
^tutitnts of liiiBlisI) Fersf.
BY
FRANCIS GUMMERE,B. Ph.D.,
Head Master of the Swain Free School, New Bedford, and formerly
Instructor in English in Harvard College.
'^BOSTON:
GINN & COMPANY.'^year byEntered, according to Act of Congress, in the 1885,
FRANCIS B. GUMMERE,
the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.in
104-2.
Boston.S. CusHiNG & Co., Printers,
J.
/PREFACE.
published in the that manyThis book is belief
teachers have felt the lack of a concise and systematic
statement of the principles of poetry. Such text-books
taught with good result in German schools, and areare
intended to simplify, not to complicate, the study of
literature. The greater part of the literature taught
in our schools and colleges is in verse but, in too
;
many cases, the scholar studies poems without having
acquired any definite and compact knowledge of the
science of poetry. This "Handbook of Poetics" is
meant to aid the teacher in laying so necessary a
foundation.
The author has tried to take a judicious position
between exploded systems on one hand, and, on the
other, those promising but not yet established theories
—of the latest writers on Poetics especially in the
matter of Versification— which, brilliant and often
enticing, have nevertheless failed so far to win general
assent. Effort has been made to be accurate without
being pedantic, and to avoid the bareness of the primer
wellas as the too abundant detail of the treatise.IV PREFACE.
Whether this effort has been successful or not, must
— —be tried by a practical test, by the judgment, not
"—as King puts it of ignorants obdurde," norJames
folks," even "learnedof "curious nor of men, quha
"thinks thame onelie wyis," but rather of the docile
bairns of knowledge."
The examples are by no means intended to be ex-
haustive. Many obvious ones, as the Olney Hymns
theor the Dunciad or Epitaph on the Countess of
Pembroke, are omitted for the same reason which Cato'
for the absence of his statue fromgave the forum. The
pupil should collect his own examples as far as he can
;
every scrap of verse which he reads shouldand be
subjected to a close analysis as regards its meaning, its
style, its rhythm. This study of the science of poetry
is altogether distinct from the art of rhetoric : the two
should be carefully held apart.
consulted,Of the many books Wackernagel's Lec-
tures on Poetik, and the works on Metre by Child,
Ellis, and Brink, may be namedSchipper, Ten as espe-
"cially helpful. The article on Poetry " in the last
the Encyclopcedia Britannica did not come tovolume of
hand in time to be of use even in the revision of the
proof-sheets.
F. B. G.
New Bedford, September, 1885.7EDITION.SECONDPREFACE TO
of usemanual would bebelief that this littleThe
been strengthenedof English poetry hasin the study
many of ourhas received fromby the welcome it
edition only such cor-scholars. In this secondbest
needed for thein the text as seemrections are made
here beAttention mustclear statement of facts.
inaccuracy in the firsthowever, to a slightcalled,
arose, itmyths about Beowaparagraph on p. 1 1 : the
but the legendaryis true, before the fifth century ;
belongsof the epic of Bcoxvulfand historical basis
Wiilker, Gnind-to the end of the sixth century {cf.
GcscJi. der Ags. Lift. As the par-riss ziir p. 306).
seem to agree withagraph is worded it does not
—what is said on Again, in speaking of T/iep. 13.
Owl and the NigJitingale I have unaccounta-(p. 32),
bly forgotten to mention that sort of poem known as
Flyting^ of which first
. the piece in question is the
specimen found in English verse, though it is not
strictly —identical with later Flytings, such as that
between Dunbar and Kennedy. Both forms, how-
ever, are undoubtedly borrowed from the old FrenchVI PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
jcii-parti Bartsch, Clircstovi. f.) in which two{cf. 343
sides of question and which,poets take opposite a ;
in its turn, Wackernagel refers to the influence of the
VergiHan eclogue. This pastoral flavor, however,
hardly justifies Mr. Stopford Brooke in calling the
delightful but noisy dialogue an Idyll.
In Paul and Braune's Beitrdge, Vol. IX, Professor
Kluge has recently treated the history of rime in
Germanic verse, and sought to establish certainhas
rules and tests important for the study of Anglo-
Saxon metres. His general results still further
strengthen the assertion, made on of thisp. 145
book, that rime is a natural product of the accentual
for while sole fac-system that beginning-rime is a
;
tor in binding together the halves of a verse ; but
end-rime is necessarily developed from the samethat
impulse, increasing with the distance from such early
Kluge thus adds end-rime toworks as Beowulf.
begin-later composition. In regard tothe tests of
perhaps well to add aning-rime itself ff.), it is(151
Beginning-use in modern verse.caution about its
by the ear, not by therime, or alliteration, is detected
is evident if weVIII, aseye Eng. Stud. 390),{cf.
'right: lurong' and fur-compare 'king: knave' with ;
thoughaccented syllables, {cfther, it counts inchiefly
Inalliteration.there is a sort of suborclinatep. 153)
—Swinburne's lines