How Final Can a Theory of Verse Be? Toward a Pragmatics of Metrics

Abstract

In this paper I present an in-depth discussion and critique of Eske Bockelmann's Propddeutik einer endlich giiltigen Theorie von den deutschen Versen, which proposes a radical revision of metrical theory from an anti-essentialist perspective that has been avoided by most metrists to date. Bockelmann's ap- proach acknowledges the subject-dependency of metrical perception, and his primary objective is to show that the pattern of alternation is not a property of specific metrical texts, but rather of the minds of reading subjects who identify a metrical mode, a predisposition outside and beyond language of which they are largely unaware. I demonstrate that Bockelmann's approach is as dogmatic as most other theories of metrics which impose a single principle on all types of verse, and I claim, among other things, that he finally neglects the rhythmic (i.e., temporal) consequences of his own theory. In response to Bockelmann's claim that the language-dependent principle of alternation can be traced to a philosophical shift in the late Renaissance, I also raise a number of more specific issues, such as when that principle was formulated. I believe that Bockelmann's greatest limitation is his failure to discern any temporally oriented metrical sys- tems operating in Western verse prior to the advent of rationalist binary alterna- tion, hence his perception of this principle as the only one operating ever since then. Moreover, Bockelmann's claim as to when this principle was introduced in German verse (i.e., by Opitz in 1624) overlooks earlier manifestations in English verse from the 1550s, as theorized by Gascoigne in 1575. Bockelmann's study nonetheless attests to, and is part of, an important opening up of the field, en- abling metrics to be aligned with recent developments in literary criticism and reintroducing it as a non-Formalist branch of general aesthetic discourse that seeks answers to fundamental questions about man's creative understanding of this world.