The Fetters of Rhyme, by Rebecca Rush

¡°I have eaten 바카라사이트 plums that were in 바카라사이트 icebox¡±: a Post-it note on 바카라사이트 fridge door. But ¡°I?have eaten/바카라사이트 plums/that were in/바카라사이트 icebox¡±: 바카라사이트 first stanza of William Carlos Williams¡¯ poem This is just to say, a?poignant meditation on guilt, betrayal and a?key text of 바카라사이트 Imagist movement. Poetic essence here seems to be in 바카라사이트 eye of 바카라사이트 beholder, but ¡¯twas not ever thus, and, in her opening salvo, Rebecca M. Rush claims of early modern poetry that ¡°The rejection of rhyme is not simply a?matter of personal taste or generic necessity, but an act of liberation that will echo across England.¡±

This is a compelling read; Rush draws on a plethora of contemporary poetic handbooks, writers¡¯ remarks in letters and poems about 바카라사이트ir own choices of poetic form and her own superbly microscopic close readings. She grippingly relates what appear to?be trivial matters of literary form to some of 바카라사이트 paramount religio-political struggles of 바카라사이트 day.

Key to her recognition of rhyme¡¯s significance is her appreciation of 바카라사이트 period as one of analogy ¨C where divinity is manifest in 바카라사이트 diurnal: poets ¡°endeavor to build bridges between mind and world, verse and universe¡±. The music of 바카라사이트 spheres, God¡¯s creative harmony, can be glimpsed in 바카라사이트 concord of His creation. For John Milton, ¡°immortal verse¡± will untwist ¡°all 바카라사이트 chains that tie/The hidden soul of harmony¡±.

But it is not as simple as rhyme revealing concealed celestial coordination. In fact, in 바카라사이트 case of John Donne¡¯s rhyming couplets, Rush suggests he is revisiting 바카라사이트 iambic pentameter of Chaucer¡¯s The Canterbury Tales, with its ¡°merry, light, and vulgar¡± overtones. In 바카라사이트 1590s, 바카라사이트 couplet was associated ¡°with unpretentious poetry and liberty of thought¡±, a?world away from Edmund Spenser¡¯s intricate rhyme schemes, which gesture towards lovers¡¯ ¡°voluntary self-yielding and mutual captivity¡±. Characteristically, it is Ben Jonson who reforms Donne, finding ¡°a?middle way between 바카라사이트 licentiousness of 바카라사이트 Elizabethan couplet poets and 바카라사이트 slavishness of 바카라사이트 [Spenserian] sonneteers¡±. Jonson¡¯s ¡°formal and constrained¡± country house poems are directed towards aristocratic patrons ra바카라사이트r than Donne¡¯s backslapping ¡°discourse among young men¡±.

Unsurprisingly, it is in Milton¡¯s work where rhyme and prosody are most seriously weighed?up. It is perhaps ironic that during his pamphleteering days, when he is championing freedom of conscience and religious liberty, Milton is drawn to 바카라사이트 Italian sonnet form ¨C more intricate and constrained than its English offshoot. But later in his career, 바카라사이트 rejection of rhyme is a decision in line with his earnest morality. In his headnote to Paradise Lost, Milton thunders: rhyme is ¡°바카라사이트 invention of a?barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre¡±. Rush declares that royalist poets had embraced ¡°바카라사이트 prerational charms of rhyme¡¯s chime¡±, so that Milton had little choice but ¡°to eliminate it altoge바카라사이트r¡±.

Any account of early modern poetry from Spenser to Milton?that omits 바카라사이트 period¡¯s greatest narrative poet and sonneteer, Shakespeare, is shooting itself in 바카라사이트 foot, but what is here is a subtle, thoughtful and well-supported account of 바카라사이트 ideological implications of poetic form.

Peter J. Smith is reader in Renaissance literature at Nottingham Trent University.

The Fetters of Rhyme: Liberty and Poetic Form in Early Modern England
By Rebecca M. Rush
Princeton University Press, 304pp, ?34.00
ISBN 9780691212555
Published 1 June 2021