I should have taken the time to define all of the terms I used, and I will happily explain any (to the best of my ability, which is limited) that are baffling.
I just assume that “Ask the metrical poet” would be a freaking short thread!
Yet these are factual things, which have a right and wrong answer to them. If we were to pursue them, and if you were shown to be factually wrong (as you would be), then what does that say about YOUR judgment? I’ve made no claims for myself as a so-called expert here, other than being relatively expert in the context of my fellow Dopers, and have provided some reasons why I hold that view of my relative expertise, but mainly I’ve stated that I acknowledge freely the wisdom of others whose expertise I rely on in metrical matters. It seems to me that others are more interested in setting me as a strawman to bash, claiming that my own reasons for thinking I know this stuff, which I fully expect to be of no probative value to anyone outside my own skin, are attempts to argue from the authority of being a teacher, a poet, or any sort of authority. I’m certainly not basing the arguments I make here on my “authority”–references to my stature, or lack of stature, IRL, are obviously anecdotal on my part, placing in context why I think as I do, but entirely to be disregarded as a basis of persuasion.
Yet people persist in bashing that strawman. Look at yourself: you don’t think I’m a teacher? That’s cool with me. You don’t think I’ver ever been to school? Um, okay. You think I’m a child? When I made this very point, in my hyperbolic post a page or so back, claiming that people wouldn’t be satisifed even if I admitted being a lucky monkey typing English sentences by blind chance, Daniel called that “pathetic.” Which it was, if I were not deliberately burlesqueing the positions that others have taken here. You seem to be taking that position seriously here. I’m not sure how to take your tone. Do you really think I’m a child? Do you really doubt I’m a professor?
More important, why does it matter? I’m not basing any of this argument on my so-called “authority.” I’ve found out some things I didn’t know–the absolute requirement in CS for displaying a high level of deference and extreme decorum in the face of arrant ignorance–and consider this whole long thread to have been well worth the posting. As to what it has “cost” me–I’m willing to pay almost any price, and to take almost any ass-whupping, in exchange for being edified. If you teach me something, but lose all respect for me in the process, I’m ahead of the game, and I thank you for your efforts in teaching me.
Well, your post about alternate readings of the line was interesting and enlightening, and your efforts in getting other expert opinions went above and beyond the call, so thank you much!
Yikes, talk about the unsound and the furry. Anyhoo, any poetic interpretation that wants me to to say CORtez instead of corTEZ is just plain wrong, though at this point I can’t figure out who’s advocating what in this pillow-fight-to-the-death.
My final word on the subject, a poem written by yours truly:
That noble French knight, Charlemagne
Heard a Brit say his name with great pain.
Quoth he, “Sons of Brittannia:
ze name is Sharl-MAN-yuh!”
The Brit said, “You Frenchmen all gag me!”
Keats just wasn’t hung up on the pronunciation of foreign names. The Keats scholars I queried thought it unremarkable that he would either have a different pronunciation than “proper” or that he would consider the pronunciation fluid–ripe for the manipulation of a poet. And Keats was a Cockney and apparently caught a lot of flack in his own time for his accent.
I said I probably wouldn’t read what you wrote about metrics, but don’t let that stop you, if you actually intend to do it. Your other posts are funny as hell, in a LePetomaine sort of way. I’m still trying to figure out if you actually believe anything you say.
Far be it from me to divert the rocking slapfest going on upthread, but I would like to throw in my reading. (Second-year Shakespeare student here, with twelve credits of metrics and scansion classes under my belt.)
Spondees are very rare, but I think this line may contain one:
“or LIKE/STOUT COR/tez WHEN/with EAG/le EYES”
The first foot and last two-and-a-half feet are pretty definitely straight iambs. I want to stress “COR” over “tez” to lead into the final feet, but as jsgoddess notes, “stout” is a hard word to unstress. Having a spondee, and one so early in the line, fits with the image of strength and, moreover, things that aren’t done very often (first reading Chapman’s Homer, watching a new planet swim into its ken, discovering the Pacific) that is a theme in the poem.
I agree with Tracy. When I read, “Like stout Cortez,” I find myself slowing down as I read the words, pausing very slightly after each, and wanting to reach up gesture as if I’m grasping something. It’s a line that practically cries out for a Shatnerian reading, overflowing with heroic imagery and militaristic machismo.
Yeats, as an accomplished poet, may be trying to achieve this effect.
I was going to post a couple of pages ago to join the smackdown, but I realized y’all didn’t exactly need my help. I will post here to chime in and say that I’ve found the lessons on scansion to be facinating! I’ll eagerly follow any subsequent threads on metric poetry, even if I probably won’t know enough to contribute even a question.
Incredibly, the mind-boggling ignorance shown by one poster is almost matched by the ignorance of my own dutifully being fought in this unlikely venue. I’ve even been inspired to go read some Keats–an activity pretty far down my list of priorities before this thread brought him to life for me. I really do love the Dope!
You’ve made my day. Seriously. Everyone in this thread who didn’t give a damn about scansion and who now thinks it’s even a little bit interesting just brightens my life.
I do have to disagree with Tracy and LHoD. Three equally stressed syllables in a row is, I think, impossible in English. Something gets demoted or promoted, and it’s generally the middle syllable. Demoting the “like” leads to the double iamb or anapest situation I mentioned earlier. Demoting “Cor” causes all sorts of problems and is unlikely rhetorically. Demoting “stout” leads to straight IP.
Stresses are relative, so it isn’t as though all weak stresses have to be exactly the same through the line. But one syllable will lose its punch when it’s next to other stressed syllables, and I think “stout” is the likely candidate.
If you read the whole poem, you’ll be swept up in the rhythm of it and the line will fall pretty easily into IP.
But scansion is awfully subjective, as you can see!
