Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-kc5xb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-12T04:50:40.836Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - Talking in tetrameter

from Part I - Voice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

John Sitter
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

Most readers who have not ventured very far into eighteenth-century poetry are likely to think of its “tight little couplets” as heroic couplets, the kind we have been examining. But probably as many or even more poems in the period were written in shorter couplets, whose lines are called iambic tetrameter if one is focusing on their four-beat norm, or simply octosyllabic if one is indicating their length of eight syllables. Readers may have run into tetrameter couplets in the poetry of Swift, now widely anthologized and taught. Swift wrote and published poetry all through his career, from the 1690s into the late 1730s, and many of his poems are among his most engaging work. His best poetry is characteristically not “poetic.” After some early, improbable attempts at writing lofty odes, Swift turned to the informal tetrameter couplet and gave it his distinct stamp in the great satiric poems of the last two decades of his writing life, including poems such as Phyllis, or The Progress of Love (c. 1719), Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General (1722), Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1735), and The Legion Club (1736). He imprinted the form so memorably that we may automatically associate it with the comic mode generally and more particularly with what may be called Swift’s “anti-poetry” or “pseudo-doggerel.” The former term refers primarily to subject matter (unpoetic stenches and sewage, for example); the latter pertains more to versification and voice. While doggerel is poorly constructed, inept poetry, “pseudo-doggerel” involves pretended ineptitude, an imitation of bad writing in which the author’s skill and cleverness peek through.

Certainly, the tetrameter couplet can lend itself to burlesque humor. The closer together rhymes occur, the closer the effect may be to jingling, especially if the rhymes are somewhat forced –

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Talking in tetrameter
  • John Sitter, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139029186.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Talking in tetrameter
  • John Sitter, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139029186.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Talking in tetrameter
  • John Sitter, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139029186.007
Available formats
×