English Rhythms in Russian Verse: On the Experiment of Joseph Brodsky

Nila Friedberg

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2011

English Rhythms in Russian Verse: On the Experiment of Joseph Brodsky

Nila Friedberg

Volume 232 in the series Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238099

Overview
Contents

About this book

Readers of poetry make aesthetic judgements about verse. It is quite common to hear intuitive statements about poets' rhythms. It is said, for example, that Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet and 1987 Nobel Prize laureate, "sounds English" when he writes in Russian.

Yet, it is far from clear what this statement means from a linguistic point of view. What is English about Brodsky's Russian poetry? And in what way are his "English" rhythms different from the verse of his Russian predecessors?

The book provides an analysis of Brodsky's experiment bringing evidence from an unusually wide variety of disciplines and theories rarely combined in a single study, including the generative approach to meter; the Russian quantitative approach, analysis of readers' intuitions about poetic rhythm, analysis of the poet's source readings, as well as acoustic phonetics, statistics, and archival research. The distinct analytic approaches applied in this book to the same phenomenon complement one another each providing insight alternate approaches do not, and showing that only a combination of theories and methods allows us to fully appreciate what Brodsky's "English accent" really was, and what any poetic innovation means.

Author / Editor information

Nila Friedberg, Portland State University, Oregon, USA.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	VII
A note on copyright and transliteration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	IX
Table of contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XI
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Brodsky’s predecessors: Rules, violations, semantics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	10
2. Redundant syllables: Elision in Brodsky’s verse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. Brodsky’s anti-RD rhythm: semantics and sources Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
Appendices
Appendix I. Changes from Brodsky’s drafts to final versions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
Appendix II. 100 randomly-selected words with the shape -Xxx- in the prose of Brodsky, Slutsky, and Donne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
Appendix III. Words with the shape -Xxx- in elision positions in the verse of Donne, Brodsky, and Slutsky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
Appendix IV. Statistical tests of words with the shape -Xxx- in poetry and prose Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Appendix V. Anti-RD rhythm in Brodsky’s iambic poems Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Appendix VI. Anti-RD rhythm in Tsvetaeva’s iambic poems Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Appendix VII. Anti-RD rhythm in Brodsky, Tsvetaeva, and Donne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Author index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Subject index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Linguists (metrical prosody, resolution, phonetics/ phonology interface, the phonetics of recitation, corpus frequencies) and Literary Scholars (English meter, 20th century Russian poetry), Specialists in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
Pages
- Front matter: 12
- Main content: 209
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 6
- Tables: 24
Keywords: Phonology; Language and Literature; Language Contact

eBook

Published: October 27, 2011
ISBN: 9783110238099

Hardcover

Published: October 17, 2011
ISBN: 9783110238082