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    Temporal Theory of Poetic Rhythm

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    Aquí No Haynadie
    This book presents and illustrates a new theory of poetic rhythm, one that clarifies, extends, and contextualizes the suggestions of my 1992 book Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. and its supporting essays (Cureton 1985, 1986, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, forthcoming). In RPEV, I argue that our flat, one-dimensional, categorical treatment of poetic rhythm is inadequate (77-117) and should be revised to align with our hierarchical, multi- dimensional, and preferential treatment of musical rhythm, in particular, with Jackendoff and Lerdahl's 1983 treatment of rhythm in Western Tonal Music and its sources (153-168), the work on melodic rhythm by Heinrich Schenker (1935/1979) and harmonic rhythm by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer (e.g., Cooper and Meter 1960, Meyer 1973). Jackendoff and Lerdahl claim that there are three distinct (but closely interacting) rhythmic "components" in Western Tonal music, what they call meter (a cyclical beating), grouping (a more vertical phrasing) and prolongation (a linear goal- orientation). In RPEV, I argue that the tradition of rhythmic analysis in verse study (1) neglects prolongation and (2) conflates meter with grouping, missing their essentially oppositional construction and complementary interaction.

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    Temporal Theory of Poetic Rhythm

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    Aquí No Haynadie
    130 views3 pages
    This book presents and illustrates a new theory of poetic rhythm, one that clarifies, extends, and contextualizes the suggestions of my 1992 book Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. and its supporting essays (Cureton 1985, 1986, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, forthcoming). In RPEV, I argue that our flat, one-dimensional, categorical treatment of poetic rhythm is inadequate (77-117) and should be revised to align with our hierarchical, multi- dimensional, and preferential treatment of musical rhythm, in particular, with Jackendoff and Lerdahl's 1983 treatment of rhythm in Western Tonal Music and its sources (153-168), the work on melodic rhythm by Heinrich Schenker (1935/1979) and harmonic rhythm by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer (e.g., Cooper and Meter 1960, Meyer 1973). Jackendoff and Lerdahl claim that there are three distinct (but closely interacting) rhythmic "components" in Western Tonal music, what they call meter (a cyclical beating), grouping (a more vertical phrasing) and prolongation (a linear goal- orientation). In RPEV, I argue that the tradition of rhythmic analysis in verse study (1) neglects prolongation and (2) conflates meter with grouping, missing their essentially oppositional construction and complementary interaction.

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    This book presents and illustrates a new theory of poetic rhythm, one that clarifies, extends, and contextualizes the suggestions of my 1992 book Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. and its supporting essays (Cureton 1985, 1986, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, forthcoming). In RPEV, I argue that our flat, one-dimensional, categorical treatment of poetic rhythm is inadequate (77-117) and should be revised to align with our hierarchical, multi- dimensional, and preferential treatment of musical rhythm, in particular, with Jackendoff and Lerdahl's 1983 treatment of rhythm in Western Tonal Music and its sources (153-168), the work on melodic rhythm by Heinrich Schenker (1935/1979) and harmonic rhythm by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer (e.g., Cooper and Meter 1960, Meyer 1973). Jackendoff and Lerdahl claim that there are three distinct (but closely interacting) rhythmic "components" in Western Tonal music, what they call meter (a cyclical beating), grouping (a more vertical phrasing) and prolongation (a linear goal- orientation). In RPEV, I argue that the tradition of rhythmic analysis in verse study (1) neglects prolongation and (2) conflates meter with grouping, missing their essentially oppositional construction and complementary interaction.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    130 views3 pages

    Temporal Theory of Poetic Rhythm

    Uploaded by

    Aquí No Haynadie
    This book presents and illustrates a new theory of poetic rhythm, one that clarifies, extends, and contextualizes the suggestions of my 1992 book Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. and its supporting essays (Cureton 1985, 1986, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, forthcoming). In RPEV, I argue that our flat, one-dimensional, categorical treatment of poetic rhythm is inadequate (77-117) and should be revised to align with our hierarchical, multi- dimensional, and preferential treatment of musical rhythm, in particular, with Jackendoff and Lerdahl's 1983 treatment of rhythm in Western Tonal Music and its sources (153-168), the work on melodic rhythm by Heinrich Schenker (1935/1979) and harmonic rhythm by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer (e.g., Cooper and Meter 1960, Meyer 1973). Jackendoff and Lerdahl claim that there are three distinct (but closely interacting) rhythmic "components" in Western Tonal music, what they call meter (a cyclical beating), grouping (a more vertical phrasing) and prolongation (a linear goal- orientation). In RPEV, I argue that the tradition of rhythmic analysis in verse study (1) neglects prolongation and (2) conflates meter with grouping, missing their essentially oppositional construction and complementary interaction.

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    A Temporal Theory of Poetic Rhythm:

    book in progress by Richard Cureton,


    University of Michigan
    This book presents and illustrates a new theory of poetic rhythm, one that clarifies, extends, and
    contextualizes the suggestions of my 1992 book Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. and its supporting
    essays (Cureton 1985, 1986, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a, 1994b, forthcoming). In RPEV, I
    argue that our flat, one-dimensional, categorical treatment of poetic rhythm is inadequate (77-117) and should
    be revised to align with our hierarchical, multi- dimensional, and preferential treatment of musical rhythm, in
    particular, with Jackendoff and Lerdahl's 1983 treatment of rhythm in Western Tonal Music and its sources
    (153-168), the work on melodic rhythm by Heinrich Schenker (1935/1979) and harmonic rhythm by
    Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer (e.g., Cooper and Meter 1960, Meyer 1973). Jackendoff and Lerdahl
    claim that there are three distinct (but closely interacting) rhythmic "components" in Western Tonal music,
    what they call meter (a cyclical beating), grouping (a more vertical phrasing) and prolongation (a linear goalorientation). In RPEV, I argue that the tradition of rhythmic analysis in verse study (1) neglects prolongation
    and (2) conflates meter with grouping, missing their essentially oppositional construction and complementary
    interaction.
    To overcome these conflations and oversights, RPEV (1) develops a full theory of verse grouping (179-275),
    (2) sketches a new representation of verse meter that conforms to Jackendoff and Lerdahl's representation of
    musical meter (126-36), and (3) suggests a skeletal representation of verse prolongation (146-53). These three
    achievements yield a treatment of verse rhythm that closely aligns with Jackendoff and Lerdahl treatment of
    musical rhythm. In a long penultimate chapter (277-422), RPEV illustrates the usefulness of this
    representation of rhythm in verse criticism.
    However, despite these accomplishments, RPEV falls considerably short of being an ideally inclusive,
    balanced, and accessible treatment of verse rhythm. First, much of RPEV is a polemical critique of other
    approaches to verse rhythm (1-117); therefore, it is distractingly negative. Second, while meter and
    prolongation are as significant to verse rhythm as grouping, RPEV does not give them the detailed attention
    they deserve. Third, being focussed on rhythmic response itself, RPEV tends to slight language, literary
    convention, and historical context, important determinants of rhythmic response. And fourth, by taking as its
    model Jackendoff and Lerdahl's treatment of Western Tonal Music, RPEV omits consideration of the rhythms
    of atonal music and their verse correlates (e.g., as surveyed in Kramer 1988) .
    Over the last ten years, I have overcome many of these limitations. This book presents these advances
    together with a re-presentation of the claims in RPEV.
    First, I have developed a theory of meter comparable to the theory of grouping in RPEV. This theory of meter
    balances the relations between these two primary rhythmic components. A major achievement of this theory
    is a full set of metrical preference rules that detail how prosody and versification affect metrical response.
    Second, in order to account for the non-linear rhythms of atonal music (and their literary analogues), I have
    added a fourth rhythmic component to Jackendoff and Lerdahl's three-component analysis of tonal music. I
    call this fourth rhythmic component theme, and have developed a conception of its organization and effect in
    verse.
    Third, I have systematized the dialectical relations among the formal features of the rhythmic components

    and correlated these features with phenomena in a range of other areas: language, rhetoric, literature, literary
    and cultural history, neurobiology, sociobiology, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, etc. These advances have
    transformed the rhythmic theory presented in RPEV into a full, rhythmically-based poetics (Cureton 1996b,
    1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1997d), one that can provide a fresh view of both linguistic form and its contexts of
    use. [For more discussion of this new poetics, see the description of one of my other book projects: A
    Temporal Poetics.] This new poetics greatly strengthens the force and significance of my claims for verse
    rhythm by detailing their theoretical and practical productivity.
    Fourth, within this temporal poetics, I have developed a new, rhythmically-based syntax. [For more
    discussion of this syntax, see the description of one of my other book projects: A Temporal Theory of
    Syntax.] This new syntax provides a multi-levelled, fractal representation of the rhythmic values of syntactic
    forms and functions, a result that permits a more detailed treatment of verse prolongation than I suggest in
    RPEV.

    Outline
    The book is divided into 9 chapters:
    Chapter 1 Poetic Rhythm: Text and Context
    Chapter 2 Language as a Rhythmic Medium
    Chapter 3 Versification
    Chapter 4 Rhythm: Features and Forms
    Chapter 5 Meter
    Chapter 6 Grouping
    Chapter 7 Prolongation
    Chapter 8 Theme
    Chapter 9 Analyses
    Chapter 1 presents some brief, informal explorations of verse rhythm as it occurs at a number of different
    levels and in a number of different manifestations. Chapter 2 explores the nature of language as a rhythmic
    medium. Chapter 3 surveys the conventional verse forms in the language. Chapter 4 describes my theory of
    rhythm and the temporal poetics that its entails. Chapter 5 presents my new theory of meter. Chapter 6
    summarizes the theory of grouping developed in RPEV. Chapter 7 uses the temporal poetics presented in
    Chapter 4 to enrich the theory of verse prolongation suggested in RPEV. Chapter 8 uses the temporal poetics
    presented in chapter 4 to suggest a theory of non-linear, relational rhythms in verse, especially free verse.
    And Chapter 9 presents a number of complete rhythmic analyses of individual canonical poems.

    Works Cited
    Cooper, G. and L. Meyer. The Rhythmic Structure of Music. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1960.
    Cureton, Richard D. "Rhythm: A Multilevel Analysis." Style 19 (1985): 64-91.
    Cureton, Richard D. "Traditional Scansion: Myths and muddles." Journal of Literary Semantics 15 (1986a):
    171-208.
    Cureton, Richard D. "Visual Form in e.e. Cummings' No Thanks." Word & Image 2 (1986b): 171-208.

    Cureton, Richard D. "A Definition of Rhythm." Eidos 3.2 (1986c): 7-10.


    Cureton, Richard D. Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse. London: Longman, 1992.
    Cureton, Richard D. "The Auditory Imagination and the Music of Poetry." Literary Stylistic Studies of
    Modern Poetry. Ed. Peter Verdonk. London: Routledge, 1993a, 68-86.
    Cureton, Richard D. "Aspects of Verse Study: Linguistic Prosody, Versification, Rhythm, Verse Experience."
    Style 4.4 (1993b): 521-29
    Cureton, Richard D. "Rhythmic Cognition and Linguistic Rhythm." Journal of Literary Semantics 23.3
    (1994a): 220-32
    Cureton, Richard D. "Rhythm and Verse Study." Language and Literature 3.2 (1994b): 105-24
    Cureton, Richard D. "A Response to Derek Attridge: 'Beyond Metrics: Richard Cureton"s Rhythmic Phrasing
    in English Verse'." Poetics Today (1996a): 29-50.
    Cureton, Richard D. "Poetry, Language, and Literary Study: The Unfinished Tasks of Stylistics." Language
    and Literature 21 (1996b): 95-112
    Cureton, Richard D. "Linguistics, Stylistics, and Poetics." Language and Literature 22 (1997a): 1-43
    Cureton, Richard D. "A Disciplinary Map for Verse Study." Versification 1.1 (1997b)
    Cureton, Richard D. "Toward a Temporal Theory of Language." Journal of English Linguistics 25 (1997c):
    293-303
    Cureton, Richard D. "Helen Vendler and the Music of Poetry." Versification 1.1 (1997d)
    Cureton, Richard D. "The Concept of Rhythm: An Exercise in Cognition." Language and Style (forthcoming)
    Kramer, J. D. The Time of Music. New York: Schirmer, 1988.
    Lerdahl, F. and R. Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT P, 1983.
    Meyer, L. Explaining Music. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1973.
    Schenker, Heinrich. Free Composition. Trans. Ernst Oster. New York: Longman, 1935/1979.

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