Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / The author analyses 4 poems of the Edda Saemundar.

The alliterating poems written during the Alliterative Revival have mistakenly been grouped together metrically, when in fact they represent a diversity of meters. They mainly use the same phonology, however, which was also current in Chaucer and Gower's poetic dialects. In detailing the diverse meters, this study argues that the meter is simple and learnable both in the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries. Chapter 1 establishes the current intractability of Middle English metrical studies, defines the English context in which these poems were written, and challenges the traditional bifurcation of English poetry into accentual and syllable-stress. The largest group of poems shares a common meter based on long unrhymed alliterating lines that use historical final --e and asymmetrical half-lines as structuring devices. Chapter 2 adds elision to Thomas Cable's metrical system to demonstrate that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers Plowman are both regular, and they belong to the same metrical tradition despite the usual move by metrists to set Piers Plowman to one side. Chapter 3 compares the meter of The Destruction of Troy with the alliterative meter described in Chapter 2 and finds that Troy uses a meter that only superficially resembles the alliterative meter because the poet does not employ half-line dissimilation. Chapter 4 compares the Gawain-poet's Pearl and the bobs and wheels from Gawain to reveal that their meters belong to neither of the two traditional schools of poetry, but is instead a medieval dolnik. Chapter 5 concludes on several of the Harley Lyrics, further problematizes the binary of native and non-native meters, and hypothesizes that the medieval audience expected a diversity of metrical experiments combining these traditions in various ways.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-277) / Microfiche. / xii, 277 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Inaug.-diss.--Jena. / Lebenslauf. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 67-68.

Thesis--Copenhagen. / At head of title: Karl Mortensen. No more published? "Kildeskrifter": p. 207.

<p>  </p> <p>This thesis is a book length collection of poetry. Divided into four sections, the book explores longing, distance, and often reckons with absence, as the poems attempt to overcome absence to achieve connection. Each of the first three sections seek to reach connection in their own distinct ways: the first through engaging the natural world, the second through exploring universal challenges of the human condition, and the third through place and location. The fourth and final section displays connections achieved or reimagines absence as something that can take on a presence through language and art. Many poems throughout the book stem from personal experience, longing for a lover or reimagining childhood experiences. Other poems step outside of the self to explore historical figures, events, or places. Many poems blend personal experiences with historical or scientific research to arrive somewhere new. The poems range from narrative to lyric and often engage modes such as elegy, reverie, meditation, and ars poetica. The poems possess a strong attention to sound and line and often utilize horizontal whitespace to physically manifest absence or motion on the page. In <em>Smallest Excavations</em>, the poet can be thought of as a collector—of snippets of memories, factoids, places, people, and natural wonders. What is collected is changed by the speaker’s poetic rendering, just as what is collected changes and molds the speaker’s identity.</p>

William Clarke (1976) and Nathan Greenberg (1980) offer an objective framework for the study of alliteration in Latin poetry. However, their definition of alliteration as word initial sound repetition in a verse is inconsistent with the syllabic nature both of the device itself and also of the metrical structure. The present study reconciles this disparity in the first half of the Aeneid by applying a similar method to syllable initial sound repetition. A chi-square test for goodness-of-fit reveals that the distributions of the voiceless obstruents [p], [t], [k], [k^w], [f], and [s] and the sonorants [m], [n], [l], and [r] differ significantly from a Poisson model. These sounds generally occur twice per verse more often than expected, and three or more times per verse less often than expected. This finding is largely consistent with existing observations about Vergil's style (e.g. Clarke, 1976; Greenberg, 1980; Wilkinson, 1963). The regular association of phonetic features with differences in distribution suggests phonetic motivation for the practice.

I examine those linguistic features of Old English and Old Norse which serve as the basic elements for the metrical systems of those languages. I begin with a critical survey of recent work on Old English metrical theory in chapter 1, which suggests that the four-position and word-foot theories of metre are the most viable current frameworks. A further conclusion of this chapter is that stress is not, as is often claimed, a core element of the metre. In chapter 2, I reassess the phonological-metrical phenomenon of Kaluza's law, which I find to be much more regular and widely applicable within Bēowulf than has previously been recognized. I further argue that the law provides evidence that Old English phonological foot structure is based on a preference for precise bimoraism. In chapter 3, I examine the role of syllables in the Norse Eddic metre fornyrðislag, which supports a view of resolution and phonological feet similar to that found in Old English, though Norse prosody is much more tolerant of degenerate, light feet. I reconsider the other major Eddic metre, ljóðaháttr, in chapter 4, integrating the insights of Andreas Heusler and Geoffrey Russom to propose a new system of scansion for this notoriously recalcitrant verse form. This scansion provides important support for the word-foot theory, and suggests that linguistic elements larger than syllables or phonological feet play a crucial role in early Germanic verse. In the final chapter, I give a diachronic account of Germanic metre and relevant linguistic structures, arguing that the word-foot theory provides the best metrical framework for understanding the development of Germanic alliterative verse. This metrical system is linguistically supported by Germanic word structures and compounding rules, and interacts with bimoraic phonological feet, all of which have a long history in Proto- and pre-Germanic.

This dissertation examines the relationship between phonetic sound and content in Latin poetry, with a focus on Books 1-3 of Horace's Odes. The central argument is that a relationship exists between sound and content in poetry, that this can be analysed and described more thoroughly and systematically than is usually the case, and that the appreciation of poetry can be enhanced by doing so. Part 1 presents a scheme for describing the sound-content relationship, and argues that this accurately reflects the perceptions of poetic audiences and is psychologically valid. The scheme begins with the concept of the 'sonance', defined as any set of sounds that renders a passage sonically noteworthy. Sonances that relate to content are classified either as 'harmonic sonances', which relate to content due to the properties of the relevant sounds, or 'repetitive sonances', which relate to content purely due to the repetition (including patterning or contrasting) of sounds, regardless of their properties. Harmonic sonances, it is argued, may relate to content through four 'harmonies', depending on whether acoustic or articulatory properties are involved and whether the relationship is one of similarity between property and content or a more distant 'metaphor'. Repetitive sonances may relate to content by several different means, or 'modes of repetition'. Part 2 presents a simple method of numerical analysis which may be applied to the text by computer to extract passages that are relatively likely to contain a sonance, and briefly discusses the process of assessing these results, identifying further sonances by more natural means, and relating each sonance to the relevant content. As an essential preliminary to such matters, Latin phonetics and phonology are also discussed in detail. Parts 3 and 4 present the results of applying these resources of assessment and description to the text, to demonstrate the type of poetic appreciation which may thus be gained. Part 3 consists of two catalogues of harmonic and repetitive sonances taken from the whole of Odes 1-3. Part 4 is a specific examination of two entire odes in much greater detail. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Humanities, 2004.

In this essay I shall analyze Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, January, 2009 from the perspective of various linguistic techniques. More specifically, I shall propose and focus on the idea that the composition of the speech has an aim to create a unity of the speaker and the audience in order to deliver the message. Moreover, the speaker maintains the atmosphere of unity throughout the speech, so that the speech produces an effect when the audience becomes a co-author of it. My thesis will also discuss some aspects of persuasive strategies employed in the speech from those dating back as long as Ancient Greece to temporal discourses. The aim is to analyze how the use of a number of linguistic approaches creates a speech which senses an agreement and co-operation between the orator and the audience.