Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms. From Language to Metrics and Beyond

Jean-Louis Aroui (1) , Bruce Hayes , François Dell , John Halle , Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna , Robert Vetterle , Andreas Dufter , Benoît de Cornulier , Marion Blondel (1) , Christopher Miller (2) , Nigel Fabb , Morris Halle , Bruno Paoli (3) , Donka Minkova , Nila Friedberg , Marc Dominicy , Mihai Nasta , Kristin Hanson , Carlos Piera , Andy Arleo (4) , Oreste Floquet (5) , Dominique Billy , José Domínguez Caparrós , Iván Horváth

1 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage
2 Groupe de recherche sur la surdité et la LSQ
3 IFPO - Institut Français du Proche-Orient
4 CRINI - Centre de recherche sur les identités, les nations et l'interculturalité
5 MoDyCo - Modèles, Dynamiques, Corpus

Metrics is often defined as a discipline that concerns itself with the study of meters. In this volume the term is used in a broader sense that more or less coincides with the traditional notion of "versification". Understood this way, metrics is an eminently complex object that displays variation over time and in space, that concerns forms of a great variety and with different statuses (meters, rhymes, stanzas, prescribed forms, syllabification rules, nursery rhymes, slogans, musical textsetting, ablaut reduplication etc.), and that as a cultural manifestation is performed in a variety of ways (sung, chanted, spoken, read) that can have direct consequences on how it is structured. This profusion of forms is thought to correspond, at the level of perception, to a limited number of cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and to represent regularly iterating forms. This volume proposes a relatively coherent overall vision by distinguishing four main families of metrical forms, each clearly independent of the others and amenable to separate typologies.

Keywords: metrics; versification; verse; metrical typology; musical textsetting; Zwiefache; nursery rhyme; chant; sung metrics; song; sign languages; French metrics; English metrics; arabic metrics; generative metrics; middle English; alliterative verse; Joseph Brodsky; translation; W.H. Auden; caesura; greek metrics; italian metrics; spanish metrics; line ending; ablaut reduplication; elision; rhyme; Tristan Corbière; Sephardic song; Hungarian metrics; stanza; sonnet

Domains: Linguistics

Jean-Louis Aroui, Bruce Hayes, François Dell, John Halle, Patrizia Noel Aziz Hanna, et al. (Dir.). Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms. From Language to Metrics and Beyond. Benjamins, pp.xiv+430, 2009. ⟨hal-00634341⟩