Re: Poetry in conlangs, was Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, etc.

On Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 09:03 PM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
[snip]

> I think it's useful to distinguish between "easy" and "hard" poetics
> for a given language.  All languages have easy poetics, presumably, but
> only some have hard ones.  In general, hard poetics are adopted from
> other languages that have higher prestige:  Latin's hard poetics come
> from Greek, where they are easy, and English's hard poetics (foot-verse,
> rhyme) come from Old French, where they were easy.
True.

> By contrast, the easy
> poetics of English involve 4-stress lines, alliteration, and half-rhyme.
And interestingly half-rhyme has remained in folk verse, playground chants
etc.

> In Old Norse, the hard poetics are a direct development of the easy ones,
> by adding stanzaic form, consonance, and rhyme to the shared Germanic
> easy poetics.
The eay poetics, of course, use the obvious features of the language. The
hard poetics are, by definition, a greater challenge. Of course, some will
fail, some will succeed with difficulty, but those who master the
difficulties will be using all (or most) of the 'hidden depths' of the
language.

Besides, I like a challenge   :)

Ray
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