Accent and metre in French: A theory of the relation between linguistic accent and metrical practice in French, 1100-1900

by Roger Pensom

Overview

There is currently no generally accepted theory of metre in French poetry. The aim of this book is to propose one which will be practically useful to readers and analysts of French verse. This theory relates metre to the accentual structure of different registers of spoken and written Modern French. It also addresses problems in the history of French metre by examining language texts from the Old French epic to the lyrics of Verlaine, as well as musical texts from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783906763187
Publisher:	Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Publication date:	11/01/1999
Edition description:	2nd Revised ed.
Pages:	177
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

The Author: Roger Pensom was born in 1939. He was educated at Manchester University where he received the degrees of BA and M.A., specializing in Old French language and literature and linguistics. He was appointed in 1966 to a lectureship at Exeter University from which he received a doctorate in 1980. He is presently University Lecturer in Old French Language and Literature in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College. He has published The Literary Technique of the Chanson de Roland (Geneva, 1982), Reading Béroul's Tristran (Berne, 1995) and articles on topics in French language and literature.

Table of Contents

Contents: Statement of the problem and the derivation of a hypothesis for its solution. Testing of the predictive power of the hypothesis in application to (1) spectrograms of spoken registers: (2) verse and musical texts. The proposal of a comprehensive method for the detailed metrical description of verse-texts in French.