CHAPTER 1
A
ACCENT. The vocal emphasis with which a syllable is spoken relative to the emphasis received by contiguous syllables. Some linguists and prosodists equate a. with stress (q.v.); some maintain that stress is simply one of the constituents of a.; and some hold that the two are quite different things. Disagreement over the nature of a. is traditional in prosodic theorizing. Does an accented syllable have a higher pitch (q.v.) than an unaccented one? Does it have a longer duration (q.v.)? Is it louder? Has it a unique timbre or quality? Or is its emphatic characteristic connected with some sort of mysterious "energy" or "impulsion" which cannot be described in terms of either pitch, length, loudness, or quality? There is little solid agreement about these questions, even though the coarsest sensibility is capable of perceiving that the line
To me the meanest flower that blows can give consists of alternating "accented" and "unaccented" syllables. Although it is obvious that there are infinite degrees of a. (whatever it is), prosodists frequently discriminate three degrees for purposes of scansion (q.v.): primary a., secondary a., and weak a.
Accents are also classified by kind: etymological or grammatical ("lexical" or "word") a. is the accentual pattern customary to the word because of derivation or the relationship of prefix and suffix to root; rhetorical or logical ("sense") a. is the variable degree of emphasis given syllables according to their sense in context, e.g.
Have you the money? Have you the móney?
and metrical a. is the abstract pattern of more or less regularly recurring emphases in a line of fairly orthodox verse. Most modern prosodic theorists would hold that metrical a. almost always yields to rhetorical except in rare cases of presumably intentional "wrenched a.," as in some popular ballads:
And I fear, I fear, my dear mastér, That we will come to harm. (Sir Patrick Spens)
On the other hand, conservative prosodists of the 18th and early 19th c. frequently maintained that rhetorical a. yields to metrical.
A., however defined, is the metrical basis of Germanic accentual and accentual-syllabic prosodies (see METER), in which, most frequently, the rhetorical importance of words or syllables in context provides the pattern of metrical accents. See STRESS, PROSODY.
R. M. Alden, Eng. Verse (1903); J. B. Mayor, A Handbook of Modern Eng. Metre (1903); T. S. Omond, Eng. Metrists (1921); R. Bridges, Milton's Prosody (rev. ed., 1921); Baum; L. Abercrombie, Principles of Eng. Prosody: Part I (1923); P. Fussell, Jr., Theory of Prosody in 18th-C. England (1954).
P.F.
ACROSTIC. The most common a. is a poem in which the initial letters of each line have a meaning when read downward. There are many variations among which the following are the most important: an a. might be a prose composition in which the initial letters of each paragraph make up the word or words in question; the a. might use the middle (mesostich) or the final letter (telestich) of each line; finally, the key letters might be distributed by stanzas and not by lines.
According to some, the a. was first used as a mnemotechnic device to ensure completeness in the oral transmission of sacred texts. In ancient times mystical significance was attributed to a. compositions. In the Old Testament all the recognized acrostics belong to the alphabetical type (abecedarian). Psalm 119 offers the most elaborate example. Here the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in their proper order form the initial letters of every other line of the 22 stanzas of the Psalm. Another example of this type of a. is Chaucer's poem An A.B.C. Gr. authors of the Alexandrian time as well as L. authors (e.g., Plautus) put the title of their plays in the a. verses of the arguments (as did Ben Jonson in The Alchemist). During the Middle Ages the a. often spelled out the name of the author or of a saint. Later also the name of the patron or the beloved was thus designated. Among the more famous poets to use the name of their beloveds are Boccaccio and Edgar Allan Poe. In the case of Der Ackermann aus Böhmen and of La Celestina the name "a." is important evidence for the identification of Johannes von Tepl and Fernando de Rojas respectively as their authors,
By extension, the forming of words — new or old — from the initials of other words is also called an a. In the early Christian church the famous symbol of the fish is the result of this type of a. The initials of the following five words spell out the Gr. word for fish, ichthys: Iesous-CHristos-THeou-(H)Yios-Soter. These words in turn mean Jesus-Christ-God's-Son-Saviour. Modern examples include words like AWOL and CARE. — R. Knox, Book of Acrostics (1924); R. Marcus, "Alphabetic Acrostics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods," Jour. of Near Eastern Studies, 6 (1947).
C.E.S.
ADONIC (Adoneus, versus Adonius). In Gr. and L. poetry this metrical unit was of the same form as the last 2 feet of the dactylic hexameter and took its name from the cry for the god Adonis:
ô ton Adonin ... (Sappho, fr. 168 Lobel and Page)
Certain Gr. proverbs were in Adonics, e.g.
gnôthi seauton.
The fourth and last line of the Sapphic (q.v.) stanza, as usually printed, was an A., although word-enjambement from the third to the fourth line would suggest that the two lines were metrically one, e.g. Horace's
labitur ripa love non probant(e) u-xorius amnis
(Odes 1.2.19–20, a rare example in that poet). Seneca employed the A. sometimes in longer runs of "lesser Sapphics." Some poets later used it stichically:
nubibus atris
condita nullum
fundere possunt
sidera lumen.
Bowra; J. F. García, "La cesura en el verso 11 del carmen XI de Catulo," Emerita 9 (1941); Kolár; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Verskunst (2d ed., 1958). R.J.G.
AIR. (a) A song, especially a form of strophic song (Eng. "ayre," Fr. air de cour, lt. balletto) in which the upper (melody) line is carried by solo voice or instrument. Because of this arrangement there is greater emphasis on the words, or poetic text, than in such compositions as madrigal or choric song. "A." in the above sense flourished during the 16th c., particularly in the hands of the Eng. lutenist composers like Dowland and Campion, (b) In a strictly musical sense, "a." is used in 17th- and 18th-c. France to refer to dancelike instrumental pieces, (c) In a somewhat recondite sense by Eng. musical writers of the 17th c., "ayre" comes to mean the mode, or key, of a particular musical sequence; thus frequently mentioned are the "aires which the Antiquity termed Modi" (Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, p. 147). This usage is supported by that of Charles Butler, Thomas Mace, and other theorists. This sense of the word seems to be the one used by Milton in "Lap me in soft Lydian airs" (L'Allegro 1.136). — The Eng. School of Lutenist Song Writers, ed. E. H. Fellowes (16 v., 1920-32; 2d ser., 16 v., 1925–27); P. Warlock, The Eng. Ayre (1926).
J. H.
ALBA (Prov.), aube, aubade (Fr.), Tagelied (Ger.). A dawn song, ordinarily expressing the regret of two lovers that day has come so soon to separate them. It has no fixed metrical form, but each stanza usually ends with the word alba. The earliest examples in Prov. and in Fr. date from the end of the 12th c. The a. probably grew out of the medieval watchman's cry, announcing from his tower the passing of the night hours and the return of day. And in one a. it is a watchman who speaks, a friend of the lover's, who has been standing guard. Others are little dialogues between lover and beloved, with occasional comments from the author. In Eng. poetry, examples can be found in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the Reeve's Tale. — A. Jeanroy, Origines ... and La Poésie ...; R. E. Kaske, "An Aube in the Reeve's Tale," ELH, 26 (1959) and "January's Aube, MLN, 75 (1960). F.M.C.
ALCAIC. Generally a 4-line stanza of Aeolic type, named after the Gr. poet Alkaios (Alcaeus, late 7th and early 6th c. B.C.). The scheme is:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Lines 1 and 2 are Greater (or hendecasyllabic) Alcaics; line 3 is a 9-syllable A.; line 4 is a Lesser (or decasyllabic) A. This is the strophe used most frequently — 37 times — by the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.). It was adapted in It. by Gabriello Chiabrera (1552–1638), Paolo Rolli (1687–1765), and Giovanni Fantoni (1755–1807). Like Chiabrera, Renaissance metricians in England and France attempted recreation of the A. among other classical meters. In 18th-c. Germany F. G. Klopstock composed 17 A. odes. Holderlin, von Platen, and others contributed to the tradition of the meter. Tennyson ("O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, ..."), A. H. Clough, and Swinburne composed Eng. A. verses. Recent examples of translations from Gr. and L. into Eng. Alcaics are to be found in, e.g., Richmond Lattimore's version of Alcaeus'
Asunnetemmi ton anemon stasin (Greek Lyrics, 1955, p. 27)
and J. B. Leishman's, H. R. Henze's,J. Michie's translations of Horace (1956, 1961, 1963). — For bibliog., see CLASSICAL METERS IN MODERN LANGUAGES. Also, C. H. Moore, Horace (1902); H. G. Atkins, A Hist, of German Versification (1923); O. Francabandera, Contribuzioni alla storia dell' alcaica (1928); G. Highet, The Cl. Tradition (1949); Koster; J. P. M. Blackett, "A Note on the A. Stanza," Greece and Rome, 2 (1956). R.A.S.
ALEXANDRINE. In Fr. prosody, a line of 12 syllables. The a. has been, since the 16th c., the standard meter of Fr. poetry, in which it has had an importance comparable to that of the quantitative hexameter in L. poetry or blank verse in Eng. poetry; it has been used especially in dramatic and narrative forms. The earliest Fr. alexandrines occur in Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem, a chanson de geste (q.v.) of the early 12th c., which abandons the traditional decasyllabic verse of Fr. epic style for the longer line. However, the a. probably takes its name from a slightly later poem, the Roman d'Alexandre (late 12th c.) of Lambert le Tort, a romance based on the legendary exploits of Alexander the Great. Having fallen into disuse in the later medieval period, the meter was revived in the 16th c. by J. A. de Baïf and was widely used by Ronsard and other members of the Pléiade. After being perfected by the great dramatists of the 17th c., especially Racine, it became the dominant meter of all serious Fr. poetry. A certain regularity, characteristic of even the earlier a. verse, was intensified by the theory and practice of the 17th-c. poets, who developed strict rules for the use of the meter. In particular, the position of the caesura after the sixth syllable tended to become standard:
Je le vis, je rougis, || je pâlis à sa vue ... (Racine, Phèdre)
After the days of Corneille, Molière, and Racine, each of whom was able to impress the meter with his own personality, the a. tended to become excessively mechanical, until the advent of the Fr. romantics revolutionized it by an extensive use of enjambement (q.v.) and a freer practice of the so-called alexandrin ternaire, with its two pauses:
J'ai disloqué | ce grand niais | d'alexandrin ... (Hugo)
The evolution is complete with Verlaine who, by his musical fluidity, deemphasizing of rhyme, and offhand treatment of mute e, brings the a. to the brink of free verse. Since symbolism, the a. has oscillated, depending upon the poet, between Malherbian rigidity and symbolist evanescence.
The a. has had great importance in the poetry of several other languages, notably Dutch, in which it was the most widely used meter from the early 17th c. until around 1880. It is a common meter in 17th-c. German poetry — widely used in the school of Opitz because of the sanction lent it by Pléiade practice, imaginatively exploited by Andreas Gryphius because of its formal appropriateness to his antithesis-filled style. The a. is also the basis from which developed the cuaderna via, the important 14-syllable Sp. meter, as well as the It. meter analogous to it. The Eng. a. differs from the Fr. in being actually longer. Composed of iambic feet, it contains 6 stress accents rather than the fluid 4 accents (occasionally 3) of the Fr. poets. Spenser uses the length of the Eng. a. to good advantage in The Faerie Queene: the a. which concludes a Spenserian stanza (q.v.) contrasts with the 8-pentameter lines which precede it and enables the poet to achieve both emphasis and stanzaic continuity. Several Eng. works — Drayton's Polyolbion, Browning's Fifine at the Fair, Bridges' Testament of Beauty — are written entirely in alexandrines, but in general the Eng. a. has proved too unwieldy for continuous use in a long work. — H. P. Thieme, The Technique of the Fr. A. (1898); V. Horak, Le vers a. en français (1911); G. Lote, L'alexandrin d'après la phonétique expérimentale (3 v., 1911–12); A. Rochette, L'alexandrin chez Victor Hugo (1911); J. B. Ratermanis, "L'inversion et la structure de l'alexandrin," FS, 6 (1952); M. Burger, Recherches sur la structure et l'origine des vers romans (1957). F.J.W.; A.P.
ALLEGORY (Gr. allos, "other," and agoreuein, "to speak") is a term denoting a technique of literature which in turn gives rise to a method of criticism. As a technique of literature, a. is a technique of fiction-writing, for there must be some kind of narrative basis for allegory. We have a. when the events of a narrative obviously and continuously refer to another simultaneous structure of events or ideas, whether historical events, moral or philosophical ideas, or natural phenomena. The myth and the fable are forms closely related to, or frequently used for, a., and the works usually called allegories are genres of fiction: epic (Dante's Divina Commedia), romance (Spenser's Faerie Queene), prose fiction (Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress) or drama (Everyman). It is continuity that distinguishes a. from ambiguity or simple allusion. Fiction-writing has two aspects: (1) a progression of incidents which are imitations of actions, and (2) elements of meaning or thought which represent a poetic use of ideas. Hence there are two main types of a.: historical or political a., referring to characters or events beyond those purportedly described in the fiction; and moral, philosophical, religious, or scientific allegories, referring to an additional set of ideas. If the allegorical reference is continuous throughout the narrative, the fiction "is" an a. If it is intermittent, if a. is picked up and dropped again at pleasure, as in many works of Ariosto, Goethe, Ibsen, and Hawthorne, we say only that the fiction shows allegorical tendencies. A. is thus not the name of a form or a genre, but of a structural principle in fiction.
A. may be simple or complex. In simple a. the fiction is wholly subordinate to the abstract "moral," hence it often impresses the literary critic as naive. An example is the fable, which is directed primarily at the set of ideas expressed in its moral. Simple historical allegories (simple at least as regards their literary structure) occur in some of the later prophecies of the Bible, such as the a. of the four kingdoms in Daniel. More complex historical and political allegories tend to develop a strongly ironic tone, resulting from the fact that the allegorist is pretending to talk about one series of incidents when he is actually talking about another. Hence there is a close connection between historical or political a. and satire, a connection marked in Spenser's Mother Hubbard's Tale (Prosopopoeia), which uses a beast-fable to satirize a contemporary political situation; in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, which uses an Old Testament story for the same purpose; in Swift's Tale of a Tub, and elsewhere.
