Language and Literary Structure: The Linguistic Analysis of Form in Verse and Narrative

by Nigel Fabb

• ISBN13: 9780521796989
• ISBN10: 0521796989
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How does a literary text get to have literary form, and what is the relation between literary form and linguistic form? This theoretical study of linguistic structure in literature focuses on verse and narrative from a linguistic perspective. Nigel Fabb provides a simple and realistic linguistic explanation of poetic form in English from 1500-1900, drawing on the English and American verse and oral narrative tradition, as well as contemporary criticism. In recent years literary theory has paid relatively little attention to form; this book argues that form is interesting. Fabb offers a new linguistic approach to how metre and rhythm work in poetry, based on pragmatic theory and provides a pragmatic explanation of formal ambiguity and indeterminacy and their aesthetic effects. He also uses linguistics to examine the experience of poetry. Language and Literary Structure will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics, literary theory and stylistics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
Note on texts used	ix
Abbreviations	x
Literary form	1	(33)
Generated metrical form	34	(23)
Communicated form	57	(31)
The communication of metre	88	(48)
Lines	136	(42)
Line-groups in metrical verse and in narrative	178	(37)
Complexity	215	(4)
Bibliography	219	(8)
Subject index	227	(2)
Index of poets cited	229