A New History of English Metre (Studies in Linguistics, 5) by Martin J. Duffell

Abstract

548 Reviews of nationhood in the work of Caryl Phillips and Andrea Levy. Along the way, James also offers insightful complementary readings of texts by writers including Ian McEwan, Amit Chaudhuri, Rose Tremain, and Kazuo Ishiguro, among many others. James's interest in the formal and ideological implications of the literary land scapes he surveys ismarried to a fascination with the specific textual devices through which writers actualize these landscapes and how these devices 'inform the reader's emotional interaction with narrative textuality' (p. 5).Why, for ex ample, do readers find certain settingsmore affecting than others? For James, the reader is less an impassive witness than an active participant in the construction of literary place. It is therefore through close attention to the experience of reading these texts that James explores the formal and ideological issues at stake in them. James's detailed and sensitive remarks on perspective, rhythm, rhyme, and even typography bolster his assertion that literary space acts as a stylistic catalyst for some of themost innovative writers inBritain today' (p. 26). James repeatedly signals his determination to remain scrupulously attentive to the particularity of thewriters and texts under discussion, and to the specificity of their literary landscapes. His discussion is therefore as concerned to explore the differences between these writers' techniques, concerns, and settings as their similarities. While highly admirable, this does leave James's conclusion with a difficult task to do in bringing themany rich strands of his discussion together again. Nevertheless, this studywill prove valuable to students and scholars of the authors discussed, and of the contemporary British novel in general. Furthermore, as an examination of how space is conceptualized and depicted, its significance extends across disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences. James suggests in his conclusion that 'Particularizing something as ephemeral and abstract as literary space provokes us to reflect on current critical pursuits' (p. 168). James's own valuable reflections on this subject run through his fascinat ing study,which offers a perceptive map of contemporary concerns in the field of literary studies at the same time as ithelps to open up a new landscape for critical exploration. London Paul Vlitos A New History ofEnglishMetre. ByMartin j.Duffell. (Studies inLinguistics, 5) London: Legenda. 2008. xii+292 pp. ?45. ISBN 978-1-905981-91-5. Some aremoved bymetre, finding a strange power ormagic in patterns ofwords. Some, too, write books on it. IfMartin Duffell (with his jargon and statistical tables) seems an unlikely guide to the songs of sirens, he yet has much to say on them, offering ample materials forothers to draw on. He writes not as a critic but a linguist, employing much technical vocabulary. The first two of his ten chapters discuss linguistic metrics and then comparative metrics. After that the approach ishistorical: theGermanic inheritance of English; the symbiosis ofmedieval English and French; the late Middle Ages inEngland and MLR, 105.2, 2010 549 Scotland. With the sixteenth century comes a divide, when English prosody (like religion and phonology) took on new rules. Three chapters deal with their emer gence, development, and (for some) outmoding. The book ends with the coming of freeverse, and English metrics in the twentieth century, followed by fifteenpages of statistics on poetry fromChaucer toHeaney, and a bibliography. The result is laudable. Objections are minor. However, despite the 'history of its title, the book can jar in its comments on the past. Its technicalities also make it heavy going, and it is not always easy to extract historical facts from it, on (say) the origins of rhyme royal or the Spenserian stanza. On the theories that the writer sets out this reviewer makes no comment, except towonder if some work on prosody (not Duffell's) is a kind of literary pyramidology, sharing its rancour and inconclusiveness, as even the author notes (p. 5,n. 6). Criticism of detail includes the following. On themetrics of Welsh (p. 47, n. 3) there are better writers than Robert Graves and Mark Abley, both untutored in that language. TheWelsh themselves cite The Princeton Encyclopedia ofPoetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Few historians will accept (p. 73) thatWilliam the Conqueror was 'theworst of England's kings' or...