A Study of Versification by Brander Matthews [PDF]

A Study of Versification

 

by Brander Matthews

 

This is not a handbook of poetics, and its aim is not to consider the several departments of poetry—epic, lyric, and dramatic. It does not deal with simile and metaphor, nor does it seek to open the mind of the student to the nobler beauties of poetry. It is intended to be an introduction to the study of versification, the metrical mechanism that sustains poetry and differentiates poetry from prose. 

It is devoted solely to the technique of the art of verse. It is an examination of the tools of the poet's trade. Although poets are said to be bom and not made, there is no doubt that they have to be made after they are bom. It is not a fact that the bom poet warbles native wood-notes wild; he has to serve an apprenticeship to his craft; he has to acquire the art of verse; he has to master its technique and spy out its secrets. The poet is like the painter, who, as Sir. Joshua Beynolds declared, "is a painter only as he can put in practice what he knows and communicate those ideas by visible representation."

 

CONTENTS

I The Study of Verse 1 

II. Rhythm 8 

III. Meter 31 

IV. Rime 49 

V. Tone-Color 73 

VI. The Stanza 102 

VII. The Sonnet 125 

VIII. Other Fixed Forms  144 

IX. Rimeless Stanzas 176 

X. The Couplet 200 

XI. Blank Verse 225 

XII. Poetic License 244 

Appendix 

A: Suggestions for Study • • • • 263 
B: Bibliographical Suggestions • • • 266 

Index •••••••••• 269 

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Also see:

• The Art of Versification
   

Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism, by Brander Matthews, 1852-1929

Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism

 

by  Brander Matthews, 1852-1929 

 

CONTENTS

1. American literature
2. Two studies of the South
3. The penalty of humor
4. On pleasing the taste of the public
5. On certain parallelisms between the ancient drama and the modern
6. The importance of the folk-theatre
7. Two French dramatic critics: 
1. M. Francisque Sarcey
2. M. Jules Lemaître
8. Two Scotsmen of letters: 
1. Mr. Andrew Lang
2.  Robert Louis Stevenson
9. Aspects of fiction:
1. The gift of story-telling
2. Cervantes
3. Zola
4. Kipling & co.
5. The prose tales of M. François Coppée
6. The short stories of M. Ludovic Halévy
7. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner as a writer of fiction
   

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The Philosophy of the Short Story by Brander Matthews (1901)

The Philosophy of the Short Story by Brander Matthews (1901). If it chance that artists fall to talking about their art, it is the critic's place to listen, that he may pick up a little knowledge. Of late, certain of the novelists of Great Britain and the United States have been discussing the principles and the practice of the art of writing stories. The discussion took a wide range. With more or less fullness, it covered the proper aim and intent of the novelist, his material and his methods, his success, his rewards, social and pecuniary, and the morality of his work and of his art. But, with all its extension, the discussion did not include one important branch of the art of fiction.

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