ENG354Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Caesura, English Poetry, Heroic Verse
ENG354: Canadian Poetry
Lecture Outline:
E. J. Pratt and Earle Birney
1. E. J. Pratt: “Come Away, Death”
A) The Opening Stanza and the Opposing Clowns
B) The Changing Face of Death
C) Death and Modern Warfare
2. Earle Birney: “Anglosaxon Street”
A) Critical Parody of Wartime Cabbagetown
B) Form
• Caesura
- “Anglo-Saxon Street” is typical Old English poem in form, each line composed of
two half-lines divided by caesura.
- When a strong phrasal pause falls within a line, it is called caesura.
- We see this in the opening lines:
Dawndrizzle ended dampness streams from
Blotching brick and blank plasterwaste
• Alliteration
- Old English alliterative technique, based on rhythm and initial rhyme, is apparent,
with at least one alliterative syllable in each half line.
• Metonymy
- The metonymic nouns are figures “in which one word is substituted for another with
which it stands in close relationship,” such as “brick” and “plasterwaste” for walls.
• Kent heiti
- A “kent heiti” is a compound word created as a descriptive noun.
- It is a more direct periphrasis [that is, a roundabout, elaborate way of saying
something] identifying the referent with something it is.
- For example, “giraffetowers” is a kent heiti referring to skyscrapers, which are
literally towers.
• Kenning
- This device may be compared to “a true kenning, wherein the referent is identified
with something it is not except in a very special metaphorical sense.”
- In “Anglosaxon Street” the kenning “dronecliffs” refers to apartment buildings.
• Formula
- Birney also employs the Anglo-Saxon poetic device of “formula,” syntactically
stylized phrases, in which individual words may be substituted to indicate subtle
modifications in sense or contrasting contexts.
- Birney introduces morning, for instance, by the formulaic “Ho! With climbing sun,”
and in the following stanza heralds afternoon by the phrase “Hoy!With sunslope.”
• Variation
- The true “variation,” a different technique evident in Anglo-Saxon poetry, occurs as
well.
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- The “double or multiple statement of the same idea, each restatement suggesting
through its choice of words either a general or more specific quality, or a different
attribute of that concept,” appears in the poem in the description of women as
“bleached beldames” and “bigthewed Saxonwives.”
C) Diction
• Ghetto
• Women
• Lack of intimacy
-about old cabbagetown
-people would grow cabbages in their yards for food
-poor conditions
-lots of kids in the area
-was gentrified
-deliberatly uses old English conventions
-predominantly white neighbourhood
-juxtapoistion of heroic verse of anglo saxon poetry and the reality of contemporary cabbage
town during the war
-serious style to express incongruous subject matter
-primarily composed of irish and anglo saxon working class immigrants
-immigrated during 1840s during potato famine
-these homes were razed in the 50s and replaces by regent park development
-bernie exposes the shallow avlues of his modern world
-magnifies, through choice of form, the inhuman environment of cabbagetown, in contrast to the
splendid experience of old English verse
-nobble cheeked is a pun on “noble-cheeked”
-anglo saxon respect for lineage contrasted with proliferation of kids in cabbagetown
-lack of heroic awareness in the ghetto
-war slogans “enhances geraniums” like manure
-weak
-focuses on the rot of the ghetto
-for him, the modern world is diametrically opposed to the heroic values of anglosaxon verse
-a parody
-bernie was a prof who taught anglo saxon and middle englsh poetry
-uses caesuras in the middle of lines
How does he make it sound anglo saxon?:
-lots of alliteration and assonance
-metonymy was very common in anglo saxon verse: a part represents the whole (brick for house)
-kentheiti: identifies the referent with something that it is
-“giraffe tower’ for sky scrapers, towers
-two nouns put together to create a descriptive word
-kenning: referent is identified with something it is not, except in a very special metaphorical
sense
-drone cliffs refers to apartment buildings
-link between buildings and cliffs is the metaphor
-referent, cliffs, is identified with something it is not: modern buildings
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