Wilde and his experience in prison: The interrelationship between syntax and metre in The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Abstract

In the present article I carry out an analysis of the interrelationship of the syntactic and metrical structures in The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The purpose of this paper is to study how Wilde’s personal experience in prison had an influence on the form of the poem, which differs from a traditional ballad in that it reflects the individual’s subjective point of view. Many critics (Funke 1972; Ellmann 1987; Price 1997; Goodman 1997) have analysed how Wilde’s sufferings are reflected on the content of the poem; nevertheless, none of them have focused on the formal structure of it. I propose that the study of the interrelationship of syntax and metre in Wilde’s ballad is complementary to these studies. In order to find evidence to support my view I have analysed the syntactic and metrical units of The Ballad of Reading Gaol from a linguistic perspective, following the proposals of Leech (1974) and Levin (1977) and incorporating Halliday’s theories (1994) into my analysis.