A metremic analysis of the poetry of Yeats

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dc.contributor.authorEinarsson, Robert Ragnaren_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-13T22:12:39Z
dc.date.available2024-08-13T22:12:39Z
dc.date.copyright1985en_US
dc.date.issued1985
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of English
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractThroughout his literary career, William Butler Yeats commented often on the subject of literary style. His comments on form and structure in poetry, however, are usually impressionistic, rather than technical. His comments on poetic form, therefore, require explanation based on a systematic, technical study of the poetry. The idea that "a poem comes right with a click like a closing box," for example, can be explained by a close metric analysis of Yeats's poetry. The field of contemporary metric analysis however, is marked by a sharp conflict between two major theoretical schools: that which bases its analysis on traditional metric theory , and that which bases its analysis on current advances in linguistics. But these two theoretical viewpoints are reconcilable, and in this thesis I present a method of analysis which reconciles the two theoretical schools. This system of analysis is then applied to several poems, in order to give empirical corollary to Yeats's impressionistic comments. In the conclusion, I suggest several possible applications of this system, which is called metremic analysis, to the study of poetry in general. These applications include a structural analysis of free verse poetry, and a way to do statistical analysis that gives clear and meaningful results.
dc.format.extent93 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/17690
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleA metremic analysis of the poetry of Yeatsen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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