ABSTRACT

It has been our aim to demonstrate that stanzaic composition inevitably poses problems of meaning. Prosodists describe the skeleton of an identically recurring formal element within the poem. Critical analysis, on the other hand, all too often defines poetic structure without considering the stanza as an aspect of meaning. Consequently, most explicators prefer to neglect the stanza. This is not to discredit either prosody or structural poetics. We need the prosodic terminology in order to talk about forms; and poetic structure can be gauged in non-stanzaic terms. But prosody has isolated forms from meaning, and structural poetics has been preoccupied with meaning beyond extrinsic form. We have tried to bridge this gap by suggesting criteria for relating the stanza to poetic structure. We have discussed various strategies through which poets arrive at stanzaic units of meaning. We have also developed a stanzaic concept of poetic structure by evaluating the logical relations among stanzas and their place and function as parts within the poetic whole.