英语诗歌鉴赏及名词解释

2021年1月25日发(作者：回声消除)
The Basic Elements of Appreciating English Poetry

is poetry


Poetry is the expression of Impassioned feeling in language.

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its
origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

“Poetry, in a
general sense, may be defined to be the expression of the
imagination.”

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty.

Poetry is the image of man and nature.



“诗言志，歌咏言。”
---
《虞书》

“诗言志之所以也。在心为志，发言为诗。情动于中而行于 言，言之不足，则嗟
叹之；嗟叹之不足，故咏歌之；咏歌之不足，不知手之舞之，足之蹈之也。情发于< br>声；声成文，谓之音。”

---
《诗·大序》

“诗是由诗人对外界所引起的感觉，注入了思想与情感，而凝结 了形象，终于被
表现出来的一种‘完成’的艺术。”
---
艾青：
《诗论》

Sound System of English Poetry

a. The prosodic features

Prosody (
韵律
)---the study of the rhythm, pause, tempo, stress and pitch
features of a language.

Chinese poetry is syllable-timed, English poetry is stress- timed.

Stress: The prosody of
English poetry is
realized by stress.
One stressed
syllable always comes together with one or more unstressed syllables.

eg. Tiger, /tiger, /burning /bright

In the /forest /of the/ night,

What im/mortal /hand or /eye

Could frame thy/ fearful /symme/try ---W. Blake


Length: it can produce some rhetorical and artistic effect.

eg. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,


The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The Ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.


---Thomas Gray

Long vowels and diphthongs make the poem slow, emotional and solemn; short
vowels quick, passionate, tense and exciting.

Pause: it serves for the rhythm and musicality of poetry.



b. Meter or measure (
格律
)

poem---stanza/strophe---line/verse---foot---arsis + thesis;

Meter or measure refers to the formation way of stressed and

unstressed syllables.

Four common meters:

a) Iambus; the iambic foot (
抑扬格
)

eg. She walks/ in beau/ty, like/ the night

Of cloud /less climes/ and star/ry skies;


And all/ that’s best /of dark/ and bright

Meet in /her as /pect and /her eyes. ---Byron

b) Trochee; the trochaic foot
（扬抑格）

eg. Never /seek to/ tell thy/ love,

Love that/ never/ told can/ be. ---Blake



c) Dactyl; the dactylic foot
（扬抑抑格）

eg. Cannon to/ right of them,

Cannon to/ left of them.

Cannon in/ front of them,


Volley’d and/ thunder’d.
---Tennyson

d) Anapaest; the anapestic foot
（抑抑扬格）

eg. Break,/ break, /break,

On thy cold /grey stones,/ O sea!

And I would /that my tongue/ could utter

The thought/ that arise /in me. ---Tennyson






























c) Other meters

Amphibrach, the amphibrachic foot (
抑扬抑格
)
；

Spondee, the spondaic foot(
扬扬格
)
；

Pyrrhic, the pyrrhic foot (
抑抑格
)
；

d) Actalectic foot (
完整音步
) and Cactalectic foot
（不完整音步）

eg. Rich the / treasure,

Sweet the / pleasure. (actalectic foot)












Tiger,/ tiger, /burning /bright,

In the/ forest/ of the/ night. (cactalectic foot )













e) Types of foot

monometer(
一音步
)

dimeter
（二音步）

trimeter
（三音步）

tetrameter
（四音步）

pentameter
（五音步）

hexameter
（六音步）

heptameter
（七音步）

octameter
（八音步）


We have
iambic monometer
,
trochaic tetrameter
,
iambic

pentameter
,
anapaestic trimeter
, etc., when the number of

foot and meter are taken together in a poem.


C. Rhyme

When two or more words or phrases contain an identical

or similar vowel sound, usually stressed, and the

consonant sounds that follow the vowel sound are

identical and preceded by different consonants, a rhyme

occurs.


It can roughly be divided into two types:

internal rhyme and end rhyme

Internal rhyme

a) alliteration: the repetition of initial identical consonant sounds or
any
vowel
sounds
in
successive
or
closely
associated
syllables,
esp.
stressed
syllables.

eg. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free.

---Coleridge








I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skinning swallows.

---Tennyson

Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,

He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.


---Shakespeare


“Consonant cluster” (辅音连缀
)


“internal or hidden alliteration” (暗头韵
) as in


“Here in the long unlovely street” (Tennyson)



The Scian & the Teian muse,


The hero’s harp, the love’s lute,

Have found the fame your shores refuse.

---Byron

b)
Assonance
(
腹韵
/
元音叠韵
/
半谐音
)
：
the
repetition
of
similar
or
identical
vowel sounds in a line ending with different consonant sounds.

eg. Do not go gentle into that night

Old age should burn and rave at close of day.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words have forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that night.


c) Consonance (
假韵
): the repetition of the ending consonant sounds with
different preceding vowels of two or more words in a line.

eg. At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited.

---Hardy

End rhyme: lines in a poem end in similar or identical

stressed syllables.




a) Perfect rhyme

Perfect rhyme (in two or more words) occurs in the following three
conditions:

identical stressed vowel sounds (lie--high, stay--play);

the same consonants after the identical stressed vowels (park--lark,
fate-- late);

different consonants preceding the stressed vowels (first
–
burst);

follow
—
swallow (perfect rhyme)


b) imperfect/ half rhyme: the stressed vowels in two or more words are the
same, but the consonant sounds after and preceding are different.

eg. fern
—
bird, faze
—
late, like
—
right

c) Masculine and feminine rhyme


eg. Sometimes when I’m lonely,


Don’t know why,


Keep thinking I won’t be lonel
y

By and by.

---Hughes






The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed


Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven…

---Shelley

Rhyme scheme (
韵式
)

a) Running rhyme scheme (
连续韵
)

two neighbouring lines rhymed in aa bb cc dd:











eg. Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry


In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes

On what wings dare he aspire

What the hand dare seize the fire


b) Alternating rhyme scheme (
交叉韵
)

rhymed every other line in a b a b c d c d:



eg. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,


And summer’s lease
hath all too short a date:

---Shakespeare


c) enclosing rhyme scheme (
首尾韵
)

In
a
quatrain,
the
first
and
the
last
rhymed,
and
the
second
and
the
third
rhymed in a b b a:


eg. When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

---W. B. Yeats









D. Form of poetry ( stanzaic form)

a) couplet: a stanza of two lines with similar end rhymes:

eg. A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring.

b) heroic couplet: a rhyming couplet of iambic pentameter:

eg. O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme:


---Denham

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;

Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.


---Pope


c) Triplet / tercet: a unit or group of three lines, usu. rhymed

eg. He clasps the crags with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.


The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls:

He watches from his mountains walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

---Tennyson























d) quatrain: a stanza of four lines rhymed or unrhymed.

eg. O my luve is like a red, red rose,


That’s newly sprung in June;

O my luve is like the melodie


That’s sweetly play’d in tune.


As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,


Till a’ the seas gang dry.


---Burns


e) Sonnet: a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of