1. Poetry and the Language of Past &
Present
A Linguistics Guide to English Poetry by
Geoffery N.Leech
Chapter # 1
Made by : Syeda Laraib Bukhari
2. Introduction:
• “Poetic language should be the current language heightend, to
any degree heightened and unlike itself, but not.. an obstacle
of poetry.”
Gerard Manley Hopkin
• “The language of the age is never the language of poetry.”
Thomas Gray
3. Varieties of English Usage:
1: Dialects:
• A language such as English contains not only different regional
dialects, used by the inhabitants of different areas,but also social
dialects, or varities of English characteristics of particular social
class or section of the community - forces slang, for example, or the
language of school childern.
• A “STANDARD ENGLISH” to which any writer wishing to command
the attention of a wide educated audience has naturally turned.
4. • In the history of English Literature since the Middle Ages, only one
poet of unquestioned greatness Robert Burns, has chosen to
write his best work outside the standard dialect.
• Other poets, notably Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy, have
made extensive use of dialect in ‘character’ poems.
5. Registers: Usage according to situation
• All the varities of English (legal English, Scientific English, liturgical
English, advertising English, the English of Journalism - all corresponding
to public institutions which we acknowledge and identify with little
difficulty) may be comprehended in the notion of REGISTER, which, as
language ‘according to use’, complements that of dialect, or language
‘according to user’.
6. • Registers, like dialects, are different ‘Englishes’: they are
distinguished by special features of semantics, vocabulary,
grammar, sometimes even of pronunciation.
7. • For instance, we recognize the sentence ‘the bus we got on was the
one he’d got off’ as colloquial in tone because of a number of
lexical and grammatical features:
the idomatic phrases get on and get off
the contraction of he had to he’d
the lack of relative pronouns in the relative clauses ‘we got on’ and
‘he’d got off;
The placement of the prepositions at the end of the clauses. (This is a
necessary concomitant of 3)
8. Roles of LANGUAGE
• Roles of language differ widely in how generous the latitude is: it is
useful to draw the attention here between
Liberal Roles: in which the pressure to linguistic conformity is weak,
and
Strict Roles: in which it is strong.
• The language of legal documents and the language of religious
observance are the clearest examples of strictness in this special sense.
9. Linguistics Convention in Poetry:
Poetry is the mode of composition which is creative par
excellence.
Rules in Poetry are made only to be broken.
There is no such thing as a literary register, a code of accepted
usage, in literature.
10. The Trend of Confirmity:
Scriptures, statutes, and literary classics are three kinds of text which
are preserved for future ages word by word and sentence by sentence.
They are more than historical documents, surviving as dead exhibits in
museums and libraries; they remain alive from generation to genration,
and speak in as authoritative a voice to one age as to another.
11. Archaism:
• “The survival of the language of the past into the
language of the present, is a feature of these time defying
roles of language.”
Geoffery Leeche
12. Archaism is language that is used in writing which is considered to be
old fashioned by today’s standard.
The archaic ingredient of poetic expression was noted long ago by
Aristotle, and has peersisted through much of the history of English
poetry.
Nevertheless in the period 1600-1900 there vaguely existed what could
be called a ‘standard archaic usage’ for English poetry, not based on the
style of any one writer.
13. • The archaic element was renewed at various times by poets who found
new inspiration in the literature of past ages: for example,
Chatterton
Coleridge
D.G Rossetti
Morris.
14. The Function of Archaism:
Archaic language is naturally invested with a dignity and solemnity
which comes fromits association with the the noble literary
achievements of the past.
It gives a sense o cultural continuity.
The sound of the older word may suit the poem better in terms of
rhyme, assonance, or alliteration.
It reflects tendency to reverence our predecessors by emulating
their manners of speaking.
It isually feels more profound and authoritative than everyday
modern English.
15. Grand, Middle & Plain Style:
Plain Style: The working dress of language
Grand Style: Ceremonial dress for a state occasion
Middle Style: Between the two, the watchword was elegance- perhaps
respectable clothes for a night out.
• The archaism and the other features contributing to poetic heightening
belonged more to the grand style than to the others.
• Plain style was most like colloquial speech, but even here some degree
of literary artistry ( felicitous choice and arrangment of words, etc) was
usually insisted on.
16. The Routine License of Verse Composition:
There is no fundamental difference between poetic language and
prose language, except that the features typifying literary
composition tend to be more persuasive and pronounced in
poetry than in prose.
17. The Routine License of Verse Composition:
The Routine License of Verse Composition
The retention in the
poetic register
Irregular Syntactic
Elements
18. The Retention in the Poetic Register:
• The retention in the poetic register of alternative forms ( such
as ‘tis for it is, ne’er for never, oft for often) containing a
different number of syllables.
Aphesis: The omission of an initial part of a word or phrase.
Syncope: The omission of a medial part
Apocope: The omission of a final part.
19. Irregular Syntactic Elements
Another freedom poets have enjoyed by custom is that of arranging
syntactic elements in an irregular order (Hyperbaton); for example,
placing an adjective after the noun it qualifies (cities fair) instead of
before (fair cities).
Jumbled clause structures have been taken so much for granted in
verse, that we scarcely notice them.
