Reading iambic trimeter

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jeidsath
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Reading iambic trimeter

Post by jeidsath »

This is a response to Hylander's post in the τὸ λεγόμενον τοῦτ' ὅμοιον ἐστί νῦν thread.
Iambic trimeters consist of three iambic metra, which (without permissible resolution of _ to υ υ) consist of x _ υ _. Iambic trimeters shouldn't be analyzed as iambic "feet" (υ _), but rather as metra. That's why they're called iambic trimeters and not iambic hexameters. Dactylic hexameters, however, can be analyzed in terms of dactylic "feet."
Hylander, that is how I used to read iambic trimeter after you and mwh taught me how in the Ajax thread (for which I am very thankful!). However I read the introduction to Sidgwick's verse composition a few weeks ago, and found some advantages to his presentation.

First, here are his rules, more or less:

1. Sidgwick explains iambic trimeters as a series of 6 iambic feet (u _) with substitution to spondees (_ _) possible in feet 1,3,5.

2. Substitution to tribrachs (u u u) in feet 1,2,3,4,5 are possible with the limitation that the tribrach can't be broken after the second syllable only, otherwise it would sound like a trochee (_ u) rather than a iambus.

3. Substitutions to dactyls (_ u u) and anapaests (u u _) are possible, with more limitations in tragedy than in comedy. Anapaests can only occur in the first foot in tragedy and are never broken. Menander, writing comedy, uses anapaests in feet 1-5 though, and frequently.

4. Dactyls, being a resolved spondee, are only possible in feet 1 and 3 in tragedy, but Menander uses them in foot 5. Obviously a dactyl can be broken after the first foot and the resolution still works. But not after the second, otherwise it's no longer a resolved spondee.

5. A caesura is necessary in foot 3 or 4.

6. A quasi-caesura is permissible (elision at the end of the 3rd foot).

7. Foot five cannot be broken (rule of the Final Cretic).

The anceps formula is visually simpler to process, and far less complicated to write down, of course, but I just can't hear it with my ear. The above I can hear, if that makes sense.
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by mwh »

I haven’t looked at this with any care, but rules 5 and 7 don’t apply to comedy.
Rules like this serve well enough for practical purposes of composition (though they would have startled the dramatists themselves) but tell us little about the nature of the iambic trimeter.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by jeidsath »

I saw some pre-Dyskolos numbers on Menander this morning, and he has improper caesura in 13.7% of his lines, which is higher than Aristophanes. I don't have numbers on how often he violates the final cretic. But the first rule at least seems more bent than broken.

However, as far as not telling us about the nature of iambic trimeter, I think that if you look closely, you would object to them for precisely the opposite reason. They are very opinionated about the nature of iambic trimeter. What a ruleset like this claims is that everything is a variation of "di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH."
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by mwh »

No actually I’m quite happy with Rule 1. Andy Devine and Larry Stephens have articles (and a book on prosody) explaining it in linguistic terms, and we have to accept that metrics is a branch of linguistics. Not easy reading but dead right.
The option of spondee in every other foot produces the iambic (and trochaic) metron, which admits of a variety of variation limited first by the template of the verse and secondarily by generic convention.
The trouble with Sidgwick’s rules as you summarized them is not just their factual inaccuracy but their lack of integration and explanatory power.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by jeidsath »

I'm sorry. By first rule, I meant the first rule that you objected to: rule 5 in my post. I didn't realize how unclear I was being when I wrote it.

As far as shedding light on meter goes, linguistics is almost an entirely observational field at the present time in regards to meter. The linguistic science of today is not even capable of predicting what rhythmical chants at a baseball game would sound good and which not from any sort of basic principal. I think that we're still a little ways from tackling Shakespeare, Virgil, or Menander with linguistics.

That said, the main linguistic argument about Greek meter should be whether it's about stress or timing. The above formulation is entirely about stress, while I would characterize the Maas/West formulation as being almost entirely concerned with timing. The above rules are concerned with where the ictus is. The Maas/West rules are concerned with syllable weight at each location. Allen says that linguistics proves the timing folks wrong, and Devine/Stephens say more or less the opposite.
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

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No I understood what you meant (in response to my pointing out that rules 5 and 7 don’t apply to comedy), and the lack of clarity was mine. I was identifying your “What a ruleset like this claims is that everything is a variation of ‘di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH di DAH’” with Sidgwick’s Rule 1 (which underpins all the rest except caesura)—a claim that I think is basically quite right. (It’s validated by D&S, which is why I mentioned them but I’m sorry I did because it took you off on one of your tangents.) The fixed variant of anceps in alternate feet results in the metron, as I said.

As I've just written in the other thread, I do think you’ll find the variations more meaningful if you think of them in terms of resolution (only occasionally broken or "split") rather than of dactyls and tribrachs and so forth. With a little practice you should be able to “hear” them easily enough as you read, and to incorporate them into a less atomized and more integrated understanding of how the trimeter works.

I don’t care to get into the stress/duration issue again, sorry. It’s a separate issue, and I don’t agree it should be the main one. Make the longs longer than the shorts, as phonologically they are, and you won't go far wrong.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by Hylander »

I guess I'm really puzzled by this. So iambic trimeters are really hexameters after all? Six iambs with premissible substitution of spondees for iambs in 1, 3 and 5, and iambic "metra" are just an overlay on this scheme? I should keep my mouth shut about metrical matters for now on.
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by jeidsath »

I actually have been able to hear it lately. It comes out very singsongy unless I suppress it (the singsong is like how I used to read Shakespeare when I was a kid), and happily trips me up whenever I use a false quantity.

Sidgwick has examples of bad lines as well as good. Spondees in even feet sound awful, a real trainwreck. Lack of caesura is detectable if I pay attention for it. The line sounds a little flat. I still trip a bit on tribrachs/anapaests/dactyls, so I can't say that I notice anything about their position from just my ear, though it's obvious enough intellectually. I imagine that the Greeks composed purely by ear.

The αποθνῃσκει thread earlier was from me going through lines that I had memorized and speaking them with the singsong, and noticing when things weren't right. It turned out that I had all the vowel lengths correct, but was pronouncing that θν as a double consonant (like the "th" in "anthill"), and it ruined the line.
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by mwh »

Hylander, No, rest easy, iambic trimeters are trimeters not hexameters. Of course you’re quite right to insist on analysis by metra rather than feet. That holds for all iambic and trochaic meters (in Greek, not in Latin). But underlying these meters is the binary principle of short and long, in alternation. The relaxation of the principle in every other foot (but only in every other foot) enables the iambic rhythm to retain its clarity while giving the poet a decent amount of flexibility within the metrical constraints. (In Latin, lexical stress patterning allowed for greater quantitative freedom in the metrical scheme without sacrificing rhythmical clarity.)

Joel, Yes of course the Greeks composed by ear. They certainly didn’t compose by consciously applying a set of rules. (Oops, I just put an anapest in the fourth foot, and I’m writing tragedy. That violates rule #3, I’d better change it.) They composed, we analyze.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by Hylander »

West (Greek Metre, pp. 18-19) explains the structure of Greek metrical schemes as follows:
In the prehistoric phase of the development of Greek metre the principle was established that there should be fixed long positions -- I call them (loci) principes) -- not only in the cadence but in the earlier part of the verse too, and that they should be spaced, neither adjacent to one another nor separated by more than two other positions. For the pattern of these longs to be recognizable it was necessary for some of the other positions to be kept short. Two rules of contrast operated:

1. Each princeps must have a short adjacent to it.
2. No short syllable might be adjacent to a long syllable not occupying a princeps position.

It follows that if successive principes are separated by two positions, these must both be short; if only by one it may be anceps if both principes have shorts on the other flank, but otherwise it must be short.
A number of qualifications follow.

These are the principles you're discussing, aren't they?
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by mwh »

Yes I suppose so—specifically the first of these two “rules.” I think I can see what you’re getting at. In historical terms the iambic trimeter represents a tightening up of quantitative patterning, with its stable organization of longs and shorts (and residual ancipitia) developing out of less rigid verse forms (Wilamowitz went so far as to recognize xxxxxxxx as a verse), while analysis as basically short-long alternation with optional lengthening of every other short—i.e. an analysis that takes “spondaic substitution” as being just that—appears to imply a loosening of them. I went so far as to speak of relaxation of the binary short:long principle—not in the anceps itself, which in any given instance is either a short or a long not something intermediate, but in the rhythmical structure of the verse.

I think these are two different ways of viewing the same phenomena, and not mutually contradictory. The first is more historical, certainly. The second is more abstract (and in conformity with the Greeks’ own analysis, so in that sense it’s historical). Arguably it has no more than descriptive value—that's what I used to think—but my reading of Devine and Stephens persuaded me otherwise. It doesn’t claim to be true to the (pre)historical evolution. All the other permissible variants in iambo-trochaic meters are best analyzed as substitutions, and long anceps can itself be analyzed in similar terms only at a more fundamental rhythmical level (which is what I meant by calling it a fixed variant).

But perhaps I’m misunderstanding the point you’re aiming to make. I fear we’re already at cross purposes. I wasn’t saying that metra are “just an overlay” on the spondaic substitution scheme, as you had it in your previous post. They’re positively defined by that scheme, in a constitutive sense. I hope I haven't just muddied the waters further.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

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No, you've clarified things for me.
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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by Timothée »

I must be frank and admit that I think I understood all but nothing about mwh's last post. I hadn't realised my grasp of metrics is this poor.

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by jeidsath »

I believe that the Devine and Stephens chapter that mwh is referring to is the one on Rhythm. They note (as others have done before) that it's reasonable to look for a secondary, non-pitch accent, based on syllable weight rather than vowel quantity, in everyday language to explain the rules of Greek poetry. Lots of languages have a quantity-based secondary accent (ómenànani versus ómenanàmme). Devine and Stephens suggest a prolongation rule. Since it's obvious what is happening with heavy syllables, the delicate thing is to describe what is going on with sequences of light syllables.

Similarly, Allen suggests a stress-based secondary accent (stress and prolongation are hard enough to separate for linguists of modern languages so it's probably silly for us to argue about it), and pursues a line of evidence based on where words that could be placed in multiple parts of the line tend to go, to develop his rule. Watch out for the misprints in that chapter of Vox Graeca. The typesetter really did not like Allen's matrix rule.

C. W. E. Miller has a wonderful article (The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin Prose, 1922) about all of this that comes up with rules very similar to Allen/Devine&Stephens, and even to West's rules above. The discussion is better than all three. He discusses some of the previous attempts to the establish this prose accent, and the trouble with creating overelaborate systems (Zander, Eurythmia vel Compositio rythmica prosae antique).
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Reading iambic trimeter

Post by mwh »

Timothée wrote:I must be frank and admit that I think I understood all but nothing about mwh's last post.
Sorry, my fault not yours. I tried to make it clear, but I can see that it came out clear as mud—much too abstruse and esoteric. I began my posts to this thread by faulting the “rules” Joel presented “in response” to Hylander’s elementary dicta, and I should have left it at that. To mollify Hylander, I’ll repeat something I said in a different thread and have said many times before, though I'd have hoped it no longer needed saying: “the metron, not the foot, is the unit of analysis.”

On the different and more complex issues that Joel seems intent on discussing, I’ll just say this is not the first time he’s touted Miller’s linguistically outdated article of 1922. See e.g. http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... er#p174222.

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