CHAPTER 1
A
ACCENT. The vocal emphasis with which a syllable is spoken relative to the emphasis received by contiguous syllables. Some linguists and prosodists equate a. with stress (q.v.); some maintain that stress is simply one of the constituents of a.; and some hold that the two are quite different things. Disagreement over the nature of a. is traditional in prosodic theorizing. Does an accented syllable have a higher pitch (q.v.) than an unaccented one? Does it have a longer duration (q.v.)? Is it louder? Has it a unique timbre or quality? Or is its emphatic characteristic connected with some sort of mysterious "energy" or "impulsion" which cannot be described in terms of either pitch, length, loudness, or quality? There is little solid agreement about these questions, even though the coarsest sensibility is capable of perceiving that the line
To me the meanest flower that blows can give consists of alternating "accented" and "unaccented" syllables. Although it is obvious that there are infinite degrees of a. (whatever it is), prosodists frequently discriminate three degrees for purposes of scansion (q.v.): primary a., secondary a., and weak a.
Accents are also classified by kind: etymological or grammatical ("lexical" or "word") a. is the accentual pattern customary to the word because of derivation or the relationship of prefix and suffix to root; rhetorical or logical ("sense") a. is the variable degree of emphasis given syllables according to their sense in context, e.g.
Have you the money? Have you the móney?
and metrical a. is the abstract pattern of more or less regularly recurring emphases in a line of fairly orthodox verse. Most modern prosodic theorists would hold that metrical a. almost always yields to rhetorical except in rare cases of presumably intentional "wrenched a.," as in some popular ballads:
And I fear, I fear, my dear mastér, That we will come to harm. (Sir Patrick Spens)
On the other hand, conservative prosodists of the 18th and early 19th c. frequently maintained that rhetorical a. yields to metrical.
A., however defined, is the metrical basis of Germanic accentual and accentual-syllabic prosodies (see METER), in which, most frequently, the rhetorical importance of words or syllables in context provides the pattern of metrical accents. See STRESS, PROSODY.
R. M. Alden, Eng. Verse (1903); J. B. Mayor, A Handbook of Modern Eng. Metre (1903); T. S. Omond, Eng. Metrists (1921); R. Bridges, Milton's Prosody (rev. ed., 1921); Baum; L. Abercrombie, Principles of Eng. Prosody: Part I (1923); P. Fussell, Jr., Theory of Prosody in 18th-C. England (1954).
P.F.
ACROSTIC. The most common a. is a poem in which the initial letters of each line have a meaning when read downward. There are many variations among which the following are the most important: an a. might be a prose composition in which the initial letters of each paragraph make up the word or words in question; the a. might use the middle (mesostich) or the final letter (telestich) of each line; finally, the key letters might be distributed by stanzas and not by lines.
According to some, the a. was first used as a mnemotechnic device to ensure completeness in the oral transmission of sacred texts. In ancient times mystical significance was attributed to a. compositions. In the Old Testament all the recognized acrostics belong to the alphabetical type (abecedarian). Psalm 119 offers the most elaborate example. Here the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in their proper order form the initial letters of every other line of the 22 stanzas of the Psalm. Another example of this type of a. is Chaucer's poem An A.B.C. Gr. authors of the Alexandrian time as well as L. authors (e.g., Plautus) put the title of their plays in the a. verses of the arguments (as did Ben Jonson in The Alchemist). During the Middle Ages the a. often spelled out the name of the author or of a saint. Later also the name of the patron or the beloved was thus designated. Among the more famous poets to use the name of their beloveds are Boccaccio and Edgar Allan Poe. In the case of Der Ackermann aus Böhmen and of La Celestina the name "a." is important evidence for the identification of Johannes von Tepl and Fernando de Rojas respectively as their authors,
By extension, the forming of words — new or old — from the initials of other words is also called an a. In the early Christian church the famous symbol of the fish is the result of this type of a. The initials of the following five words spell out the Gr. word for fish, ichthys: Iesous-CHristos-THeou-(H)Yios-Soter. These words in turn mean Jesus-Christ-God's-Son-Saviour. Modern examples include words like AWOL and CARE. — R. Knox, Book of Acrostics (1924); R. Marcus, "Alphabetic Acrostics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods," Jour. of Near Eastern Studies, 6 (1947).
C.E.S.
ADONIC (Adoneus, versus Adonius). In Gr. and L. poetry this metrical unit was of the same form as the last 2 feet of the dactylic hexameter and took its name from the cry for the god Adonis:
ô ton Adonin ... (Sappho, fr. 168 Lobel and Page)
Certain Gr. proverbs were in Adonics, e.g.
gnôthi seauton.
The fourth and last line of the Sapphic (q.v.) stanza, as usually printed, was an A., although word-enjambement from the third to the fourth line would suggest that the two lines were metrically one, e.g. Horace's
labitur ripa love non probant(e) u-xorius amnis
(Odes 1.2.19–20, a rare example in that poet). Seneca employed the A. sometimes in longer runs of "lesser Sapphics." Some poets later used it stichically:
nubibus atris
condita nullum
fundere possunt
sidera lumen.
Bowra; J. F. García, "La cesura en el verso 11 del carmen XI de Catulo," Emerita 9 (1941); Kolár; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Verskunst (2d ed., 1958). R.J.G.
AIR. (a) A song, especially a form of strophic song (Eng. "ayre," Fr. air de cour, lt. balletto) in which the upper (melody) line is carried by solo voice or instrument. Because of this arrangement there is greater emphasis on the words, or poetic text, than in such compositions as madrigal or choric song. "A." in the above sense flourished during the 16th c., particularly in the hands of the Eng. lutenist composers like Dowland and Campion, (b) In a strictly musical sense, "a." is used in 17th- and 18th-c. France to refer to dancelike instrumental pieces, (c) In a somewhat recondite sense by Eng. musical writers of the 17th c., "ayre" comes to mean the mode, or key, of a particular musical sequence; thus frequently mentioned are the "aires which the Antiquity termed Modi" (Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, p. 147). This usage is supported by that of Charles Butler, Thomas Mace, and other theorists. This sense of the word seems to be the one used by Milton in "Lap me in soft Lydian airs" (L'Allegro 1.136)....
