Where Does the Stress Fall?

Abstract

In this highly readable introduction to the analysis of poetry, Michael Ferber attempts to explain how the study of poetry, or more precisely verse, can be enriched by an understanding of linguistics. In seven chapters of lucid and personable prose, he considers the application of linguistics to metre, rhyme, onomatopoeia, non-standard syntax, meaning, metaphor, and translation, in each case providing clear definitions of technical terms and numerous examples of the features in question. Taken together, the chapters provide a crisp, well-illustrated guide to a set of linguistic concepts which may not be familiar to students of verse but may be very useful to them. Much of the book is devoted to guiding the reader through descriptive schemas and illustrating how these can be applied. Chapter 2, for instance, provides a clear introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and how to analyse verse phonetically. Readers with a background in literary criticism rather than linguistics may find this a little daunting (much referring back to the table setting out the relationship between the thirty-six symbols and the sounds they represent is to be expected), but Ferber does show why using the IPA can be useful in poetic analysis. Sound patterns which may be obscured by the idiosyncrasies of English spelling, for instance, are much easier to spot in a poem that has been transliterated into IPA.