ABSTRACT
When we apply the word ‘rhythm’ to speech we are referring to its characteristic movement in time, as perceived by the speaker and hearer; and we saw in the previous chapter that although spoken English has an underlying tendency towards regularity, this is seldom fully achieved in normal usage. The ‘rhythm’ of a song or a dance, on the other hand, or ‘rhythm’ as a psychological phenomenon, both of which we are concerned with in this chapter, carry much stronger connotations of regular patterning. The two notions are close – if the language had no principle of regularity at all we would refer merely to its ‘movement’, not its ‘rhythm’ – but the gap between them must not be ignored, since it is the function of metre to bridge that gap, and in so doing to shape the linguistic material into the lively and subtle forms of verse. The general principles of rhythm, as manifested in music as well as in poetry, operate in metrical verse at several levels, and in our discussion of them in this chapter we shall move from the deeper levels to those nearer the surface; that is, from the simple rhythmic forms which underlie the variety that exists in metrical practice to the rhythmic features which make that variety possible. The one exception to this order will be the final section on dipodic rhythm, which takes us back once more to elementary rhythmic processes. This chapter deals exclusively with the four-beat rhythm in its various guises, as the most fundamental rhythmic form in verse, but the framework developed in the course of the discussion is relevant to all regular forms, and will be the basis of the account of the five-beat rhythm in the chapter that follows.
