There is no psychological limit on the duration of metrical lines in performance: Against Turner and Pöppel

Nigel Fabb

doi:10.15462/ijll.v2i1.14

Abstract

Frederick Turner and Ernst Pöppel (1983) proposed that lines of metrical poetry tend to measure three seconds or less when performed aloud, and that the metrical line is fitted to a three second ‘auditory present’ in the brain. In this paper I show that there are faults both in their original argument, and in the claims which underlie it. I present new data, based on the measurement of line durations in publicly available recorded performances of 54 metrical poems; in this corpus, lines of performed metrical verse are often longer than three seconds: 59% of the 1155 lines are longer than 3 seconds, 40% longer than 3.5 seconds and 26% longer than 4 seconds. On the basis of weaknesses in the original paper, and the new data presented here, I propose, against Turner and Pöppel, that there is no evidence that lines of verse are constrained by a time-limited psychological capacity.

Highlights

The ‘metrical line’ is a section of text whose length is fixed by rule, often with some regulated variation
Many meters control other aspects of the line, notably its rhythm, and this is true of iambic pentameter which produces lines which tend to be stressed on even-numbered syllables
The general question this paper addresses is whether there is a time-based psychological factor influencing the upper length of metrical lines

Summary

Introduction

The ‘metrical line’ is a section of text whose length is fixed by rule, often with some regulated variation. The Baddeley-Hitch model does offer a way of fitting the verse line into working memory, but not in a time-limited part of working memory This is the episodic buffer, the component which draws on information from the phonological loop and other sources, organizes this information into chunks, and can hold up to about fifteen words of connected speech: a whole line of verse could be held in this part of working memory, based not on duration but on other factors such as number of words. When performers read poems aloud, they do not necessarily pause at line boundaries; instead the text is divided into different, usually shorter, sections, by pauses (and line boundaries can be lost completely in the spoken performance) Are these stretches of speech the time-limited units of approximately three seconds, which TP seek in performed poetry? A B deviation from average syll per sec syll per sec no. of syllables duration in secs

41 That every tongue

Findings

Conclusion