From Library Journal
Raffel's book is not--and is not meant to be--a "standard" like Paul Fussell Jr.'s Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (1965). It is, rather, a single-minded theoretical history of English scansion. Sometimes very interesting, e.g., when it treats the pre-Romantic/Romantic breakdown of what Raffel calls the Chaucerian Compromise, this book generally seems too absolute. It may be true that "whether we approve or disapprove," English uses inherently iambic stress-phonemic patterns, but poetry is artful and Raffel insists too much on the iamb, meanwhile all but ignoring the emphatic or disemphatic spondaic or pyrrhic feet (which Fussell notes are "very frequently used for substitution"). The book may prompt interesting debate among linguists/metrecists, but it is for large academic or research collections only.
- Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
