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The criteria for determining whether a biblical text is poetry or prose have long been debated, but there is widespread consensus that lineation is a key criterion. 'Enjambment' refers to the continuation of a syntactic unit across a line boundary without a major juncture or pause. This paper argues that correct identification of enjambment as a syntactic phenomenon can only take place if the line boundaries themselves have been determined according to syntactic criteria. To that end, this paper uses the syntactic criteria laid out in the Revised and Extended Hebrew Verse Structure (REHVS) model first to determine the line boundaries in the ascent psalms (Psalms 120–134), and then to identify all instances of enjambment within that corpus. This is followed by an exploration of the effects of enjambment as a poetic technique in the ascent psalms in light of the appositive style of biblical Hebrew poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In popular and scholarly discourse on texted music and music-speech intersections, the prevailing assumption is that the linguistic features of the lyrics (e.g., syllabic stress) align with the way the lyrics are sung (e.g., phenomenal accent in or affecting the melody)--or, if not, that they should. However, not only can text and music conflict, but they do so in a variety of ways, to varying degrees, and with different effects on our listening experience. I define prosodic dissonance as any conflict between the prosodic linguistic features and musical rendition of text. This could include misalignment between syllabic and durational/registral stress, between spoken and sung phrases, or between spoken and sung intonation. Prosodic dissonance/consonance can also interact with rhyme, vowel shape, parallelism, and syncopation. To recognize prosodic dissonance, I (1) determine the prosody for the lyrics as spoken, (2) determine the prosody for the melody as sung, (3) identify mismatches as dissonances, (4) consider the effect of the surrounding melody/lyrics, (5) consider alternate pronunciations or hearings that might account for it, and (6) consider the perceptual and analytical implications. This article focuses on prosodic dissonance in popular music, with longer analyses of Kesha's "Tonight" (2020), Royal & the Serpent's "Overwhelmed" (2020), and Rina Sawayama's "This Hell" (2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Ashbery's work has been widely translated and studied; however, there is little research on the translation of his poetry into Spanish. In this essay I propose that the professional profile of the translators affects the decisions that shape the final text. The translation of poetry demands special attention to the rhythm and the effect that each word has on the lines and on the poem, so it should consider the conventions of the target culture to determine whether to adhere to them. The focus on enjambment allows productive observations to be made about translation decisions and their effect on the rhythmic structure of the poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Carson’s rewriting of Heracles’ tragic madness— through the art of collage, an assembling and disassambling of textual fragments, scraps of papers, drawings, chromatic smears, and sketches—as an imagistic site for theorizing the anti-normative materiality, physical and metaphysical, of par-a-noia. I make a case for a materiality of par-a-noia by proposing a com- parison with Alain Badiou’s Marxist political formalism. The distinctive formal trait of H of H, verbal and pictorial juxtaposition, invites us to think of par-a-noia as an aesthetico-political radi- cality located on the edge of a voiding of thought (noein), a radicality that, as I suggest at the end, can be aligned with modes of non-normate cognition, with neuroqueer countersociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible in poetry, constitutes the difference between poetry and prose. Yet, the translation of line breaks is among the least studied areas of translation theory. This essay explores the challenge of translating classical and modernist line breaks through examples from Persian and European literary canons. From Shams-i Qays's classic treatise on Persian prosody to Arthur Rimbaud and William Carlos Williams to modernist poet Bijan Elahi's poetic rewriting of One Thousand and One Nights, we explore the options open to the translator-poet who seeks to create a new poem in and through translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The author explores the limitations of art based on the potential sources of inspiration for Michel Houellebecq’s The map and the territory. The dialectic of art is questioned upon its links to capitalism, the sustainability of art and the artist when it comes to the confidence of realization of one’s ideas. The map-territory relation creates space for expressing the dynamics between the idea itself, its representation and what it entails when it comes to existing or perceived notions of delineation between the natural order (substance, materialization) and modernity (abstraction, impression). Houellebecq’s character gives precedence to the idea, and as in non-art, its serving as a conduit for natural expression, at the same time sets a limit to human expression, culminating in nature overcoming culture. Suggesting that both nature and (idea) art deriving from it can be brutal in their own ways. The inquiry consists of trying to unearth the identity of an artist and doing so by using biofictional practices to draw a connection with, but not limited to, a conceptual creator, Douglas Huebler. Intersection of the conceptual modes of reality with the reality itself in art is inevitable. With art, the onus is in respecting the two worlds with their separate qualities, bonding the differences without negating nor assimilating them; stretching the limits of creation both in the artist and what constitutes art as a whole. Hence, the border, as John Ruskin would say, lies within the mystery of life and art.

The subject of this work is poetic enjambment, which is an inconsistency of the flow of verse structure in a poem and the syntactic divisions of the poetic text. Enjambment is known as one of the most constitutive phenomena in verse, and its importance has grown immeasurably in our cultural sphere over the last few decades. Therefore, it has been a real wake-up call not only for poets, linguists, versologists, literary historians, and philosophers, but also for those studying human cognition and cognitive processes. There are various types of enjambments, each with different properties. Some fundamentally affect our perception of the poem, while others are barely perceptible and require specific attention. Some can be found between verses, within them, or between poetic stanzas. Some examples exist at the level of syntax, while others are found within the word. But most importantly, they all belong to the realm of versification. All of them create meanings and shape the reading. This text sets itself a truly pragmatic goal: to gather in one place and organize this basic knowledge referred to this verse phenomenon for the poetics of verse, and to present an overview of the poetic enjambment (in Polish poetry), its etymology, typology, and examples from older and newer works by poets of various periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dicenda: Cuadernos de Filologia Hispanica is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos de Filología Clásica: Estudios Latinos is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article deals with versified works of Viktor Dyk from the pre-war period (1897–1914) written in iambic pentameter. It analyses the relationship between the texts’ genre (lyric, satire, drama) and their rhythmic features (frequencies of stressing the line-initial and line-final syllables, frequencies of enjambment). The article concludes that Dyk’s lyric poems as well as his drama tend to employ features generally perceived as more literary compared to his satire.

The iambic trimeters of Plautus are analyzed by syntactic boundaries and shown to be composed in a very narrow range of clause-measures using regular termini points in trimeters—line-end and the two caesuras. The five most frequently used syntactic measures account for half of trimeter composition. Plautus composed in modular units of syntax. This paper demonstrates: 1) the most frequent clause-type in Plautus' trimeters is a trimeter in length, 2) the most frequent clause-type involving enjambment is exactly two trimeters in length, 3) certain clause-types appear with greater frequency in certain plays of Plautus, 4) clause-types can be shown to have distinctive, rhythmic cadences associated with each type. This modular method of clause composition must have been the product of its functional service to the playwright as he generated plays, to the actors who memorized them, and to the audience who heard discourse delivered in regular clause-packets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author continues to apply cognitive reading to oral traditional poetry, addressing the kopla zaharra—a short improvisational poetic genre from the Basque Country that is now extinct. In order to understand how this genre once functioned, the author draws her experience in working with ayyu—a living poetic tradition from Morocco, which has a strikingly similar structure. The analysis sets out from the historical evidence showing that the kopla zaharra was indeed once an improvisational genre. She then explains the notions of frames, or topics or themes, and scripts, or possible scenarios manifested at least partly in form of formulaic language, which are triggered by these, to analyze the typical cognitive structure of the kopla zaharra. Her analysis shows that on the cognitive level the kopla zaharra offers a structure similar to the Moroccan ayyu, where the first two lines work to activate a frame and the last two lines generally complete a script. This confirms the conclusion that although ayyu and kopla zaharrak are separated by a wide cultural and linguistic rift, the cognitive mechanisms behind the process of their creation are highly analogous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to address the critical status of the woman singer (the muse) in Stevens' poem "The Idea of Order at Key West." In many critical commentaries on this work, the muse is seen as vacillating between two extreme states, that is, as being either resistant to interpretation or as nonexistent whatsoever. The conclusion drawn by these diverse commentaries is that Stevens makes a systematic attempt to suppress the feminine voice by inscribing the determining and determinable male poet at the center of the poem. This research, however, is an attempt to refute this interpretation by drawing on Giorgio Agamben's philosophical theories concerning the "end of the poem," and by focusing specifically on formal aspects of the poem. In light of Agamben's theories, it will be argued that the muse should be seen not only as the sole site of a meaning-making event by referring to its own pure moment of existence without presupposing any transcendental signifier that precedes it, but also as the only reference point that allows fresh possibilities of meaning to emerge. As such, we will show that the muse's voice is not expropriated by a misogynistic male poet, but on the contrary, it is precisely her indeterminate deictic presence as the pronoun she that makes her, the poem, the poet, and the readers as the ultimate creative sources of meaning who do not yield to any masculine logic of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with versified works of Viktor Dyk from the pre-war period (1897-1914) written in iambic pentameter. It analyses the relationship between the texts' genre (lyric, satire, drama) and their rhythmic features (frequencies of stressing the line-initial and line-final syllables, frequencies of enjambment). The article concludes that Dyk's lyric poems as well as his drama tend to employ features generally perceived as more literary compared to his satire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Louise Glück’s latest collection Faithful And Virtuous Night (2014), the poet’s swerving toward a more narrative form contributes—surprisingly perhaps—to revising the traditional Romantic chiasmus that exists between the mourning or suffering personae and their environment. This article attempts at capturing how Glück’s choices in lineation in her verse expose the intrinsic loss and hiatus there is between language and the world. It means to illustrate the way time and lyric subjectivity are structured in Glück’s latest collection.

“No ideas but in hinges,” poet Stephen Rodefer once quipped in his poem “Numberless Shadows,” playfully modifying William Carlos Williams’s famous line. This essay examines line breaks as poetic hinges in the work of Ron Padgett: they are flexible spaces where the parts of the poem turn and articulate, the lines poised between conflicting forces, between formal interruption and syntactical momentum. An attempt at defining such versatile spaces, this essay seeks to explore line breaks as the pretexts for Ron Padgett’s metatextual poetics. Line breaks are pivotal points: not only are they constitutive of verse, but they also provide occasions for the poem to reflect upon itself. In Padgett’s work, they are critical junctures, when language hesitates between transitive and intransitive impulses.

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of line breaks in the libretto Alice Goodman wrote for Nixon in China (1987), her first collaboration with composer John Adams. In the opera, enjambments function first and foremost as literary devices; as such, they emphasize the text’s autonomy and its independence from its musical setting. On a meta-operatic level, the resulting discrepancy between words and music draws attention to the various modes of dislocation at play in an opera whose plot hinges on the acceptance of irreconcilable differences. Finally, the article considers the musical function of line breaks: they loosen up the meter and create complex patterns, which the composer uses for his own purposes.

Mehmet Âkif is a prominent poet who focused his attention on all the problems that the Turkish nation experienced at the beginning of the 20th century. He proposed solutions, and his poems made an overwhelming impression in the society. All his thoughts, comments and proposals are included in his work called Safahat. Mehmet Âkif dealt with every aspect of life and besides his social poems, he also wrote personal and sufi poems. This article focuses on his poetic story named Bebek yahut Hakk-ı Karar (Baby or Decision Rights). In this poem, Âkif describes the attitudes of his little daughters towards their doll in an entertaining way. In the article, some interesting forms and interesting aspects in the content of the poem are discussed. These can be summarized as follows: The naturalness in the dialogues and in the narration, the closeness to prose expression, the adaptation of the aruz prosody to the spoken language, the humorous view that dominates the poetry, the sensitivity shown to the inner world of the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anales de Literatura Hispanoamericana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents series of historiometric studies that exemplify the value of "citation analysis" as an empirical approach to professional literary-critical interpretation, especially with respect to the question of the "literariness" of literary texts. Specifically, the studies show that professional interpreters of Wordsworth's poetry, across more than a century of time and despite widely varying critical approaches, tend to pay more attention to and therefore more frequently cite lines that involve prospective enjambments. Lines involving nominative noun phrase and retrospective enjambments, however, did not reveal the same correlation with frequency of citation. The studies thus suggest that literariness does indeed have a relatively stable textual component that may be discriminated through citation analysis of professional interpretations of individual literary texts by authors writing in distinct genres of literature and in different periods in literary history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study submits to empirical investigation an old idea of Tsur’s regarding the effect of enjambment on the perceived subtleness of irony in a poetic passage. We submitted two versions of a Milton passage to over 50 participants with “background in literary studies”, ranging from undergraduates to tenured professors, asking them to rate the perceived subtleness of irony and forthrightness of expression. We received four incompatible combinations of relative subtleness and forthrightness in the two passages. Two of the combinations were logically reasonable (though resulting from opposite performances), and two were internally inconsistent. An analysis of these results revealed two sources of this discrepancy: enjambments can be performed in three different ways, and participants respond not to abstract enjambments, but to performed enjambments; and they act upon partly overlapping definitions of irony. Assuming different performances of the enjambment, both logically acceptable response patterns support our hypothesis. Yet, a large part of the responses in this study were incoherent to some extent. This highlights the difficulty in collecting subjective interpretations of complex aesthetic events. We discuss this methodological issue at length.

Agamben’s overall method as detailed inThe Signature of All Thingsis named by him as philosophical archaeology. Said archaeology addresses the large-scale concepts that organise discursive structures over time and place and reveals their common metaphysical basis. In particular an impossible to sustain economy between a founding common and a founded proper which constantly change place so that the clear distinction between that which founds and that which is founded becomes impossible to discern. It becomes, in his terminology, indifferent. The signatures of Power, Life, Potentiality and Language are well known in Agamben’s work, as is his love for poetry. What has not yet been commented on is that for Agamben Poetry is a signature and so must be subject to the same method of suspensive indifference as the more nefarious discourses of power and domination. In this article the signature of Poetry is defined as the economy between the semantic, or prose as founding common, and the semiotic, or poetry as founded proper. That Agamben gives so much attention to the signature Poetry is because it is central to the suspension of the basis of all signatory constructs, Language as pure communicability as such. Yet more than this Agamben’s indifferentiation of poetry in terms of the perceived tension between semantic and semiotic, opens up complex and powerful forces at the heart of the poetic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reassesses the scholarly consensus whereby verse-end enjambment is felt to carry extra emphasis. In my view, such affective prosody should not automatically or arbitrarily be tied to metrical position. As a marker of emphasis at verse end, any prosodic affectiveness should be judged on the basis of semantic and intonational expectations. Homeric verse-end enjambment in general is poetically meaningless and prosodically unmarked: it may have gone unnoticed in performance. With only few exceptions enjambment reflects regular, undisturbed clause formation despite the verse end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unfaithful phrase. Semantics of the enjambment in Mieczysław Jasturn’s translations of Das Buch der Bilder by Rainer Maria Rilke The article discusses a broadly understood relation between the translation of a poetic text and versification. Assuming that reading a poem (as well as its translation) is always an interpretation that heavily depends on the reader’s activity, his choices and intentions, and assuming that the prosodic shape is an important sensemaking factor, the author of the article tries to show how the title “unfaithfulness of a phrase” – translator’s incorrect reading of the source text’s prosody (in Bloom’s understanding) – might influence the shape of the reader’s perception of the text and thus become an important factor of the poetic semantics. Assuming the asymmetric paradigm of the theory of a poem, the author does not focus on the metrical size nor the poetic rhyme (as it is frequently done in older papers) but on those aspects of a poem (like enjambment or the graphical shape of the text) that used to be marginalized, and which – if viewed from the perspective of the reader – are easier to notice than intertextual qualities of the meter that require familiarity with versification rules.

This study describes two eye tracking experiments investigating the processing of poetry with and without enjambments. In Experiment 1, poetic fragments with authentic prospective (syntactically incomplete) or retrospective (syntactically complete) enjambments were investigated; in Experiment 2, enjambments were created -- for the purpose of the experiment -- from poetry that did not originally contain enjambments. We hypothesized that the layout of the text in poetic fragments would affect the degree to which integrative processes take place: in case of prospective enjambments, the syntactic incompleteness may preclude integration at the end of the line (before going to the next line), whereas retrospective enjambments may cause considerable re-interpretation at the next line. We indeed found significant differences in reading patterns between prose and poetry, poetry with and without enjambment, and poetry with prospective and retrospective enjambment. We interpret these results as favoring a dynamic model of language processing, where the amount and type of integration is determined by syntactic (in)completeness, semantic (in)completeness, but also the physical layout of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]