The structural properties of the anagram in poetry

2016

This article illustrates the main theoretical and practical problem of the study of the anagram in poetry, the still unknown entity of the anagrammatic combination, which requires specific software in order to perform a structural analysis of the text. This difficulty explains the failure of Saussure's original hypotheses and the gradual decline, following the rediscovery of his work, of the interest of researchers in this subject. However, some poems (by Blake, Moore, Mallarmé, Valéry, Apollinaire, and Leopardi) illustrate the enormous potential of the anagram for the structural analysis of poetic texts: the study of formal structure, of semantic-thematic nuclei and of metaphor, together with the main criteria for examining, with some simplification, the anagrammatic combination. An explanation is also offered for anagrammatic and grammatical-syntactic cooperation, involving the current theory of the lemma. At the time of the generation of a poetic text, the anagram acts as an associative intermediary between the combinatory matrix of the signifieds and the combinatory matrix of the signifiers, producing a lexical selection that gives anagrammatic coherence to the text. This associative intermediary enables us to understand the particular recursive function of semiosis in poetry that is given a distinct unity by the anagram.

mbedded", which links up with the anagram ound-ound of "f-ound -ground" to produce the line shown in the diagram below.

2009

Since poetic text is completely detached from the external world, it creates a "context of situation" (Halliday, 1985) for itself through special patterning of its own lexis. This study investigates how the lexicalization strategies make the nature of poetic texts so distinctive from other modes of language. Among all linguistic elements illustrating special patterning in poetic texts, this study focuses on the way the field diversity leads the reader to negotiate a meaning which requires more processing time, effort and attention; consequently, rendering it more enjoyable in nature and hence of aesthetically higher value. The purpose is to investigate the relationship between "the higher degree of semantic field diversity compared with semantic field lexical density" in a poetic text and "the aesthetic effect" of that text. To achieve this goal, twenty poetic texts with an already-established literary and aesthetic value are analyzed in terms of lexica...

French Studies Bulletin, 2006

2013

Poetry is recognizable to readers for its use of certain effects achieved through linguistic “manipulation.” In most cases, especially in the case of contemporary poetry, these effects are obtained not through particular word choices or striking literary devices, but through specific syntactic constructions. This paper will focus on poetic syntax by viewing it as the “bone” that holds meaning in poetry. It will not be simply an attempt to revisit poetic syntax, but a demonstration of the importance syntax, as representative of the grammatical structure of poetry, has on meaning. Most poetic effects are achieved through the use of certain syntactic structures. Examples of attempts to undo the original syntactic structures of some poems and adjust them to new syntactic structures will be brought here to suggest that a change of syntactic structure brings about a change of meaning.

Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, 2020

In the course of his painstaking study of ancient verse, Ferdinand de Saussure came up with an intriguing theory about the phonetics of the poetry he scanned. He postulated that the “jeux phoniques” he detected in the texts he analysed was proof that their authors were attempting to “parasite” the surface level meaning of their verse with a “hypotexte”. This hypotexte consisted of “anagrams” of “mots thèmes” whose phonetic properties were “isosyllabically diffracted” throughout the rest of the host text. Today it is generally accepted that Saussure was wrong about this. Few however maintain that what he discerned in the phonetic depths of the verse he auscultated was no more than the figment of a fertile imagination. But if this be so, what exactly had he detected? This paper maintains that what Saussure stumbled upon was the trace of a contribution made to ancient verse by melodically and metrically organised sounds. This was inevitable. Virtually all the texts he probed were “carmina sacra” that were composed to be sung and accompanied by music. This musical accompaniment had a decisive impact on the phonetics of the “lexemic” words in the Poetry that has survived. This is so because sung verse cannot “euphoniously” accommodate a musical accompaniment unless its phonetics constituents are selected, concatenated and intoned in such a way as to follow the melodic contours and rhythm patterns that modulate their articulation. In addition, the point of making verse consist both of melodically organised arrangements of sound and of organisations of sound in which one can recognise ordinary words was not simply ornamental. The real point was to bi nature what one was hearing. In other words, the goal was to “over-signify” the usual meanings of the “logocentric” words in the verse with a separate but complementary meaning and narrative encoded in melodised tones and metered rhythms. Why qualify the accompanying music as “acousmatic voices”? Because the music in question was added to song to give a voice to whichever tutelary divinity the song was performed to honour. That’s what makes “acousmatic voices” an especially apt epithet for characterising the melodically and rhythmically structured bodies of sound Saussure so presciently discerned in the phonetic depths of the poésie phonissante he probed. The point of their being in poetry was to give a voice to the agencies to whom the object or occasion of verse is beholden for its Being-in-the-world.

2017

This paper attempts a stylistic study of a poem. It targets to unveil the deeper underpinnings of semanticity in condensed literary pieces, particularly in poetry, as a consequence of the style employed by an author. Among other findings, the study uncovered the peculiar use of lexis and the features embedded in such peculiar use. It brings to the fore, the heavy use of deviation and parallelism in drumming home the theme of the poem. And finally, a fundamental literary feature used which is worthy of note and which the study has clearly drawn attention to in the analysis, is the foregrounding of the entire literary piece, which gives it a unique outlook. On the surface, one might not notice the effect of this literary technique but the study has meticulously pointed this out. Article visualizations:

Journal of Literary Semantics 42(1), 115-140, 2013 (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jlse)

In analysing a range of 20th century poems and excerpts, stylisticians and literary critics have individuated a number of linguistic and textual features which they relate – with various degrees of explicitness – to the complex notion of ‘difficulty’. While there is a fair amount of agreement in the set of phenomena identified, to the best of my knowledge these have never been analysed, grouped and classified from a linguistic and unified perspective. This is the chief aim of the present paper, in which I reconsider previously discussed poetic excerpts in order to derive a checklist of linguistic phenomena demanding further investigation and even future empirical testing. Another major aim is that of illustrating how widespread and problematic the use of ‘difficult’ and ‘difficulty’ is, often implying quite distinct senses. The meaning of this pair will be kept indeterminate throughout the whole paper, where it simply refers to the personal usage of the critic or stylistician at stake. At the end of the paper, by contrast, a clearer characterization will emerge in the light of the textual excerpts analysed: difficulty is regarded as a combination of semantic opacity and hypothesized processing effort at syntagmatic level. However, being part of a wider ongoing research project, a more satisfactory formulation is still to come. Finally, an additional outcome of the paper is that of adding some evidence to the study of poetic language by taking into account recent poetic developments that so far have been given little attention in stylistics.

International Journal of Multilingual Education, by Viktoriia Iashkina, 2015

Sound instrumentation of poetic speech as one of the drivers producing direct influence on the emersion and genesis of sound symbolism in the tissue of poetic texts has always been, and remains a subject of vivid scientific interest and polemics among linguists and literary theorists of both the past and nowadays. A correlation between phonetic significance and semantic meaning still remains a subject of clarification and more precise definition. Those who tried to find a correlation between the formal and the notional used to apply for studying appropriate stylistic means of sound arrangement of poetical works, such as paronymic attraction, parallelism, and poetical etymology. In the later research works it is stated that while the stylistic means foregrounded by the precursors are comprehended as those deliberately used by poets to their full extent, the area of the subconscious mind should be considered of at least equal importance in this regard, as the latter produces great influence on the ways of artistic imagery formation as well as ability of its further perception and appreciation. In this sense it appears that the connection between sounding and meaning, or sound symbolism, can hardly be revealed in monolingual poetic sample. Contemporary linguistics has no doubt about the fact, that sounds of speech, even spelled separately, do have an ability of forming non-sound associations and images. The aim of this article is to find links which unite a unique poetic whole with its multilingual translations.

This paper presents the work on the study of compound sentences in poetic syntax of J. Brodsky (one sentence discourse) and the study which emerged from this study on the interpretation of a poem of the Russian poet Sergei Gandlevsky (multiple sentence discourse). The paper shows that at the level of syntax we can find syntactic synergies (“clusters” of syntactic function). These syntactic synergies correspond with semantic focal points of poetic text.