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The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versification

  • Oreste Floquet
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Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms
This chapter is in the book Towards a Typology of Poetic Forms

Abstract

Current thought in Italian metrics considers that all processes affecting adjacent vowels within a verse, whether synaloepha or dialoepha, are stylistic phenomena unrelated to phonological phenomena such as elision, hiatus, aphaeresis and apocope. This belief is perhaps due to the fact that juncture phenomena almost never have counterparts at the graphic level. The aim of this presentation is to show, rather, that numerous “metrical exceptions” are to be explained on the basis of the phonology of the language or of a dialectic between the written and oral registers. On the basis of a corpus formed by Dante’s Divina Commedia, Petrarch’s songbook, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata and Marino’s Adone, we will attempt to argue for a distinction between “false” synaloephas and dialoephas (which are in fact elisions or obligatory hiatuses) and “graphic” synaloephas and dialoephas (in which it seems reasonable to posit pressure on the oral register from the written register).

Abstract

Current thought in Italian metrics considers that all processes affecting adjacent vowels within a verse, whether synaloepha or dialoepha, are stylistic phenomena unrelated to phonological phenomena such as elision, hiatus, aphaeresis and apocope. This belief is perhaps due to the fact that juncture phenomena almost never have counterparts at the graphic level. The aim of this presentation is to show, rather, that numerous “metrical exceptions” are to be explained on the basis of the phonology of the language or of a dialectic between the written and oral registers. On the basis of a corpus formed by Dante’s Divina Commedia, Petrarch’s songbook, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata and Marino’s Adone, we will attempt to argue for a distinction between “false” synaloephas and dialoephas (which are in fact elisions or obligatory hiatuses) and “graphic” synaloephas and dialoephas (in which it seems reasonable to posit pressure on the oral register from the written register).

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgments xiii
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Isochronous metrics
  7. Textsetting as constraint conflict 43
  8. Comparing musical textsetting in French and in English songs 63
  9. Bavarian Zwiefache 79
  10. Natural Versification in French and German counting-out rhymes 101
  11. Minimal chronometric forms 123
  12. Symmetry and children’s poetry in sign languages 143
  13. Part II. Prosodic metrics
  14. Pairs and triplets 167
  15. Generative linguistics and Arabic metrics 193
  16. On the meter of Middle English alliterative verse 209
  17. The Russian Auden and the Russianness of Auden 229
  18. Towards a universal definition of the caesura 247
  19. Metrical alignment 267
  20. Rephrasing line-end restrictions 287
  21. Part III. Para-metrical phenomena
  22. Pif paf poof 307
  23. The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versification 325
  24. Part IV. Macrostructural metrics
  25. Convention and parody in the rhyming of Tristan Corbière 337
  26. The metrics of Sephardic song 355
  27. A rule of metrical uniformity in old Hungarian poetry 371
  28. Metrical structure of the European sonnet 385
  29. Persons index 403
  30. Languages index 411
  31. Subjects index 415
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.2.16flo

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgments xiii
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Isochronous metrics
  7. Textsetting as constraint conflict 43
  8. Comparing musical textsetting in French and in English songs 63
  9. Bavarian Zwiefache 79
  10. Natural Versification in French and German counting-out rhymes 101
  11. Minimal chronometric forms 123
  12. Symmetry and children’s poetry in sign languages 143
  13. Part II. Prosodic metrics
  14. Pairs and triplets 167
  15. Generative linguistics and Arabic metrics 193
  16. On the meter of Middle English alliterative verse 209
  17. The Russian Auden and the Russianness of Auden 229
  18. Towards a universal definition of the caesura 247
  19. Metrical alignment 267
  20. Rephrasing line-end restrictions 287
  21. Part III. Para-metrical phenomena
  22. Pif paf poof 307
  23. The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versification 325
  24. Part IV. Macrostructural metrics
  25. Convention and parody in the rhyming of Tristan Corbière 337
  26. The metrics of Sephardic song 355
  27. A rule of metrical uniformity in old Hungarian poetry 371
  28. Metrical structure of the European sonnet 385
  29. Persons index 403
  30. Languages index 411
  31. Subjects index 415
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