Rhythm and Linguistic Form: Toward a Temporal Theory of Poetic Language

The title of our session, "Linguistics and Poetics: Revisited" is meant to recall Roman Jakobson's famous closing statement at the 1958 Indiana conference on style. For better or worse, Jakobson's closing statement has set many of the basic parameters of the long-standing argument over the relations between linguistic and literary study; or to put it in disciplinary terms, over the intentions and achievements of what is usually called stylistics. It is this issue that I would like to address here.

As many have now clarified, the major theoretical task of stylistics is to establish some criterial perspective that can relate language and literature, both to one another and to other major humanistic concerns---art, ideology, social and economic praxis, history, religion, psychology, biology/neurology, and so forth. In his 1958 paper, Jakobson suggested that we accomplish this task from the point of view of communication. All communication, he suggested, involves a small number of factors, each of which is associated with a communicative function, with the literary/poetic/aesthetic function being just one of these, one that focusses attention on the message itself,independent of its relation to addressee, addresser, or context. This self-focussing, he went on to claim, is achieved primarily by means of a dense paralleling, which concentrates in the syntagmatic/actual use of the medium related forms and meanings from the paradigmatic/virtual organization of the medium's communicative code. This projection of the principle of equivalence into the syntagmatic creates a secondary synonymy/antonymy over and above the primary organization of form and meaning that (also) appears: parallel forms create parallel meanings.

Jakobson's projection principle indeed isolates an important aspect of art, perhaps the most important, what is usually called theme. In thematic organization, some central human concern implied by the overall experience of an artwork is subjected to a formal analysis by the diverse and variant details of the work, usually by foregrounding minimal relations of similarity and difference--counterparts, examples, prototypes, analogues, preconditions, consequences, blends, extensions, variants, and so forth. Through the type of projectional process that Jakobson outlines, the theme of a work is examined from multiple perspectives, exemplified in multiple contexts, and embodied at multiple levels in the formal organization of the medium.
However, Jakobson's claim that poetic uses of language are thematically organized is neither new nor adequate as a criterial perspective for a principled stylistics. His projection principle isolates only one aspect of one sort of aesthetic structuring; it is not a theory of any of the major phenomena that must be accounted for by a theory of literature--language, rhetoric, the literary genres, the stylistic elaboration of these genres, the historical realization of these styles, the philosophical, sociological, and psychological preconditions of these styles, and so forth. If literature is one of the great art forms, as it certainly is, and if all great art forms give us detailed knowledge of the human, then any adequate stylistics must be based upon a full theory of human nature and its cultural and historical realizations.

Over the last five years or so, I have been suggesting that such a criterial perspective for a principled stylistics might be available in the forms of human time--not a novel suggestion, certainly, but one that has not been sufficiently explored. Rhythm creates time; and much of the recent work throughout the humanities and human sciences has been invoking rhythm and temporality to advance their projects. There seems to be growing evidence from many sources (1) that the most basic facts about the human mind are its modes of temporal processing, (2) that these modes of temporal processing are most clearly and completely revealed in the mind's rhythmic capabilities, (3) that these rhythmic capabilities evolved in a certain order and by a certain dialectical process, and (4) that the results of these evolutionary developments provide both the basic elements and overall morphology of many other major products of mind.

TEMPORAL FEATURES	Meter cyclical	Grouping centroidal	Prolongation linear	Theme relational
equative relation	similarity	difference-in similarity	similarity-in- difference	difference
sequential relation	occurrence repetition succcession	correspondence prominence proportion	transition direction implication	connection distinction simultaneity
subject-subject relation	participation	obligation	cooperation	freedom
subject-event relation	subjective	objective-in- subjective	subjective-in- objective	objective
semiotic relation	icon	emblem	index	symbol
experiential process	reaction passive	affection reciprocal	exploration active	creation improvisatory
clock time orientation	past	present	future	relative
event position	initial	medial	final	peripheral
relational scope	proximate	local	regional	global
contour	fall	rise-fall	fall-rise	rise
volatility	fixed	constrained	volatile	free

My major claim is that these rhythmic components fractalize the major products of human cognition into dialectically related quadratures. For instance, within language and rhetoric, these rhythms lead to our major levels of linguistic structure, our major word categories, our major modes of word formation, the major levels of organization in prosody, our major verbal and nominal functions, our major modes of grammatical elaboration, the basic inventory and uses of our major tropes and schemes, and so forth. Given this extension of rhythm into grammar and rhetoric, poets can use language to vocalize, grammaticalize, semanticize, and rhetoricize temporal values.

At the outer limit, these temporal complexions fractalize whole areas of humanistic concern. For instance, as Northrop Frye claimed, the four major literary genres (drama, prose fiction, poetry, and epic/song) are elegantly motivated in these rhythmic terms; and as Hayden White has argued, Frye's theory of the literary genres can be extended to account for the major modes of literary emplotment (romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire) and the major metaphysical worldviews in cultural history (formism, organicism,mechanism, and contextualism). These temporal complexions also fractialize the historical periods in which these worldviews predominated in the West (the Ancient world; the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment; the 19th century; and the twentieth century).

Time

Cyclical

Centroidal

Linear

Relational

I. Psychological and Neurological

sociobiology	colonial invertebrate	social insect	non-human mammal	human
neurology	reptilian brain	mammalian brain	left cortex	right cortex
faculty	sense body	feeling emotion	will action	memory thought
generative sense	touch	smell/taste	hearing	sight
phylogeny	australopithicus	homo habilis	homo erectus	homo sapiens
ontogeny	child	youth	adult	elder
psychopathology	manic depression	psychosis	neurosis	amnesia

II. Cultural

history of the West	Ancient	Medieval Renaissance Enlightenment	19th century	Modern Postmodern
philosphy	formism	organicism	mechanism	contextualism
economy	hunting & gathering	agriculture	industry	information
religion	polytheism	monotheism	naturalism	humanism
social system	tribalism	feudalism	capitalism	socialism
linguistic technology	orality	chirography	typography	cybernetics
logic	conduction	deduction	induction	abduction
temporal orientation	past	present	future	relative
primary political & economic group	tribe	city-state	nation	world
primary social & personal group	family kin	estate peer	class citizen	none individual
government	monarchy	aristocracy	republic	democracy
spatial art	sculpture	architecture	painting	photography
social ethic	communal fate	personal duty	social progress	individual freedom
personal ethic	4 wisdom 3 justice 2 temperance 1 courage	4 faith 3 obedience/hope 2 charity 1 purity	4 intelligence 3 willpower 2 respect 1 discipline	4 creativity 3 freedom 2 care 1 excitement

III. Literary and Rhetorical

genre	epic	lyric	narrative	drama
reader/listener positioning	speech	character	audience	author
scheme	repetition	pattern	process	network
repetition	initial	medial	final	peripheral
pattern	concentric	geometircal	teleological	multidimensional
sonic sheme	alliteration	rhyme reverse rhyme assonance	consonance	pararhyme
discourse logic	paratactic	logical	temporal	dialectical
emplotment	romance	comedy	tragedy	satire
medium	song	poetry	prose	talk
artist	singer	poet	author	performer
creative process	dictation	revelation	exploration	improvisation
trope	metaphor	synecdoche	metonymy	irony
semiotic relation	iconic	emblematic	indexical	symbolic
imagery	spring mornining birth child mineral dream earth rain heaven etc.	summer noon growth youth vegetable wake water fountain/spring Eden etc.	fall evening maturity adult animal live air river purgatory etc.	winter night death elder human sleep fire sea/snow hell etc.

IV. Linguistic

(a) general

linguistic level

paralanguage

prosody

syntax

semantics

(b) prosody

prosody	stress	tonicity	tone	tune
stress	weak	tertiary	secondary	primary
prosodic hierarchy	syllable	clitic phrase	phonological phrase	tone unit
syllable	onset	nucleus	coda	periphery
tone	fall	rise-fall	fall-rise	rise

(c) syntax

syntactic level	word	phrase	clause	sentence
sentence types	declarative	exclamative	imperative	interrogative
subordinate clause	nominal	relative comparative	adverbial	comment
complexing	apposition	conjunction	correlation	comment
basic clause pattern	intransitive SV	copular SVCs	transitive SVO, SVOC, SVOO, SVOA	copular-adverbial SVA
transitivity	monotransitive SVO	complex-transitive SVOC	ditransitive SVOO	transitive-adverbial SVOA
clausal constituency	subject	predicator	complement	adverbial
mood	indicative	subjunctive	imperative	conditional
adverbial	adjunct	subjunct	conunct	disjunct
adjunct	time & space	process	contingency	respect
subjunct	item	intensifier	courtesy	viewpoint
intensifier	focussing	amplifier	predication	emphasizer
phrase type	noun phrase	adjective phrase	verb phrase	adverb/ prepositional phrase
phrasal slots	head	modifier	complement	specifier
verb phrase	voice	aspect	modality	tense
voice	passive	middle	active	causative
aspect	perfective	habitual	progressive	perfect
tense	past	present	future	relative
modality	necessity	obligation	probability	possibility
reference	generic	indefinite	definite	proper
person	3rd	1st	2nd	generic
word formation	compounding	derivation	inflection	conversion
word class	noun	adjective	verb	adverb

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;

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breath, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

On the other hand, any particular lyric poem or any particular part of any particular lyric poem will usually modulate this general stylistic dominant with a complex, but coherent, mixture of choices from the other temporalities, depending on the poem's historical and cultural positioning, including the text's positioning within larger historical eras and the localdemands of authorial intention, sub-genre, text, and part of text being considered.

For instance, in the sonnets of the great Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth's "It Is a Beauteous Evening," the basic centroidal texture of the Renasissance lyric is maintained, but it is heavily modulated by the linearity of the historical and socio-cultural context (the nineteenth century).

It Is a Beauteous Evening

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:

Listen! A mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,

And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

Poetically, Wordsworth adds this linearity by foregroundingdynamic beginnings and endings of many different sorts and at manydifferent level of structure but in such a way that they neutralize one another, creating intensely static, shapely centers. The result is a "waved" motion of unusual variety, density, and energy that, again and again, begins easily and naturally, rises to a central climax, pauses, radiates its energies vertically, upward and downward in the textual thematics, and then moves on to an extended, and therefore, equally natural, muted finale. When embodiedin language, rhetoric, and cultural reference, this temporal figure dissolves past and future into a present epiphany: will and sense fuse inemotion; family and social class, in religious order.

To achieve this more linear temporality, Wordsworth modifies the culminating hypermeter in the canonical Renaissance sonnet so that it broadens and deepens in the center. By skewing the phrasal divisioning in the octave against the square rhyme scheme, he reduces the meter of the normal sonnet octave to one, three-part stanza that delivers a partial coda, both (prematurely) in its first part, and finally, on the stanzaic coda itself, shifting the double caudation that characterizes the Renaissance sonnet to the middle of the text. Arrested at the center, the text hovers in stasis and then proceeds more delicately and demurely into the sestet, ending with the same pair of partial codas, but now without larger structural support. With this hypermeter, the first half of the text now metrically outweighs the second half. The speaker's observation of the scene is lengthened; his spiritual epiphany ("a mighty Being is awake...") is felt more deeply and more physically; and the worldly consequences of his epiphany (the speaker's reaffirmation of the divinity of the child in the sestet) is softened and lightened.

Hypermeter

Section 1, Stanza 1, Part 1

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a Nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun (partial coda)

Section 1, Stanza 1, Part 2

Is sinking down in its tranquility;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:

Section 1, Stanza 1, Part 3 (stanzaic coda)

Listen! A mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder--everlastingly. (partial coda)

Stanza 2, Part 1

Dear child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine: (partial coda)

Stanza 2, Part 2

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,

And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not. (partial coda)

This hypermeter also radically alters the rhythmic effect of the repeated quatrain rhyme scheme in the octave, and with a similarcombination of centering and linearizing. With respect to the meter, the repetitive abba / abba pattern becomes abb / aa / bba, a non-repetitive, asymmetrical pattern that is both more expanded, more intricate, and more tightly concentric. This rhyme scheme focusses attention on the couplet in lines 4-5, especially its culminating second part: "The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea."

Temporal linearity is told out into the semantics and rhetoric of the text in metonymic relations, especially prepositional relations. At opening of the text, evening is connected metonymically to sun, then sea, then (more mysteriously) to God's cosmic thunder. The gentleness of heaven broods "o'er" the sea. The child walks "with" the speaker. She is untouched "by" solemn thought. She lies "in" Abraham's bosom and worships "at" the Temple's inner shrine, God being "with" her.

On the borderline between semantics and rhetoric, many of the adjectives in the text are also implicitly metonymic. The evening is "beauteous," "calm," and "free," the time is "holy," "quiet," and "breathless," because the speaker and those who share his faith and the heightened perception it provides feel it to be so, not because it inherently is so. These metonymic adjectives have been long recognized as the major mark of Wordsworth's Romantic style. In them, subject and object come together, and for a moment, interweave.

The predominantly linear motion of the poem is also told out into syntax by the regular movement of clauses from thematic subjects to rhematic predicates.

THEME

RHEME

	It	is a beauteous evening.
		calm and free,
	The holy time	is quiet
as	a Nun	Breathless with adoration;
	the broad sun	Is sinking down in its tranquility;
	The gentleness of heaven	broods o'er the Sea:
	Listen!
	A mighty Being	is awake,
And	doth with his eternal motion	make A sound like thunder--everlastingly.
	Dear child! dear Girl!
that		walkest with me here,
If	thou	appear untouched by solemn thought,
	Thy nautre	is not therefore less divine:
	Thou	liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And		worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
	God	being with thee
when	we	know it not.

Syntactic elements within clauses are seldom inverted or dislocated; and sentences are primarily simple, or if elaborated, compound rather than subordinated.

Wordsworth's phrases are also neither complex nor simple; thus he distances his verse from a purely lyric temporality here, too. There is only one comparative clause ("as a Nun / Breathless with adoration") and only one relative clause ("that walkest with me here"), and those phrases that have non-clausal modifiers never have more than one.

determiner	pre-modifier	head	post-modifier
a	beauteous	evening
the	holy	time
the		gentleness	of heaven
a	mighty	Being
his	eternal	motion
a		sound	like thunder
	Dear	child
	dear	Girl
		untouched	by solemn thought
the Temple's	inner	shrine

the holy time

the broad sun

the gentleness of heaven

the Sea

the mighty Being

the year

the Temple's inner shrine

Other tellings of linear time into syntax are more scattered but are also important. The text contains an imperative (Listen!), several second person references (thou, Thy, thou), a progressive (is sinking down), a conjunct (therefore), a couple of implied correlatives (if-[then], [then]-when), and a transitive verb, albeit negated (know). The speaker does not just hold forth to no one in particular (or to himself) on some topic of universal concern, as a lyric speaker often does. He speaks to the child. The child is with him there. He directs her to attend. And then he goes on to induce the empirical certainty of her divinity, based on his observations of nature.

Finally, linearity is told out into sound in the strong consonantal patterning in the text, especially those patterns involving [r], [s], and nasals ([n], [m], and [ng] ). These consonantal patterns consistently foreground the ends of syllables, directing our attention through the syllable to its termination. Significantly, these terminations are also consistently continuant (or, if not continuant, sonorant).

[r]	[s]	[n]/[m]/[ng]
wor.ship'st	wor.ship'st	calm
i.nner	beau.teous	time
year	breath.less	Nun
na.ture	gen.tle.ness	Sun
there.fore	lis.ten	sin.king
a.ppear	less	down
na.ture	li.est	tran.qui.li.ty
Dear	wal.kest	gen.tle.ness
dear		hea.ven
here		lis.ten
e.ter.nal		mo.tion
thun.der		sound
e/ver/las.ting.ly		thun.der
		so.lemn
		A.bra.ham's
		di.vine
		shrine
		bosom
		Be.ing
		be.ing