Reading the Rhythm
The Poetics of French Free Verse 1910-1930
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:5th Aug '93
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse, a poetry which has been largely neglected by metrical theory. Clive Scott's readable and scholarly study indicates the strategies of reading needed if justice is to be done to free verse's rhythmic versatility. The core of Reading the Rhythm is an analysis of key French twentieth-century poets and poems, including Perse's Éloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsibérien, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, and Documentaires; Apollinaire's Calligrammes; Supervielle's Gravitations; and Reverdy's Sources de vent. Contemporary trends in the visual arts - Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, photography - are called upon as perceptual models to illuminate free verse and a further perspective is added by the theme of travel and movement. This is an accomplished examination of the rhythms of free verse, and of its implications for our reading of regular verse. It is also a significant study of modernist poetics.
'a well-informed, thorough, sensitive and excellently organized book on Laforgue's poetry as a whole ... Reading the Rhythm contains a range of treasures for the anglophone reader of modern French verse' Times Literary Supplement
'Detailed and subtle rhythmic analyses of poems from Éloges, Prose du Transsibérien, Gravitations, Sources du vent, Calligrammes, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques and Documentaires. The first four of these in particular receive truly ground-breaking readings ... tutors will find it a revelation and a liberation, from which their students can only benefit as much as they do.' Forum for Modern Language Studies
'These poets aimed to create new attitudes to the syllable as metrical element; after reading this book, it is impossible not to apply those attitudes in one's reading. Most undergraduates would find the sometimes wordy lapidariness of the book hard going, but their tutors will find it a revelation and a liberation, from which their students can only benefit as much as they do.' FMLS Vol 8 '94
the poetry specialist interested in free verse or in any of the poets studied will likely to find it to be thought-provoking and rewarding * Charles D. Minahen, Ohio State University, The French Review, Vol.70, No.3, February 1997 *
ISBN: 9780198158820
Dimensions: 219mm x 144mm x 23mm
Weight: 496g
304 pages