NPPF: CANTO ONE D. Fowler/ for Jasper

[cfalbert]

You asked yesterday why Nabokov felt compelled to "rhyme"....here is a standard explanation for the use of the heroic couplet....

"Here it is especially apparent that the use of couplets, with their closure, surety and sense of completeness, undescores that sense of control, frequently vivible control, which Nab.s work always gives."

Douglas Fowler - Reading Nabokov pg.112

Here is the Norton Anthology of Poetry take:

"2. The couplet, two lines of verse, usually coupled by rhyme, has been a principal unit of English poetry since rhyme entered the language.......The sustained use of such closed couplets attaned its ultimate sophistication in what came to be known as Heroic couplets (heroic because of their use in epic poems or plays), pioneered by Denham in the 17th cent.  and perfected by Dryden and Pope in the 18th. The Chaucerian energies of the iambic pentameter were reigned in and each couplet made a balanced whole within the greater balanced whole of its poem......As if in reaction against the elevated (heroic or mock heroic) diction and syntactic formality of the heroic couplet, more recent users of the couplethave tended to veer towards the other extreme of informality...."

CFA  note......Pope and Goldsmith wrote in this form, Wordsworth had already moved on to "free verse" and Tennyson (as  Jbor has pointed out, a  major influence on PF) was switching to a "abba"  (Italian Sonnet) rhyme scheme, and what I believe is iambic tetrameter....

this may all sound somewhat techincal, but if you take a look at a few representative verses of each, you will quickly note the differences in "effect".

love,
cfa
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