Of Relating the Linguistic Description to an Interpretation of a Literary Work (Poetry)

This article attempts to see, through the structural significances of poeticlanguage, the nature of the split between linguistic description and literaryinterpretation. Rhythm is the most prominent means of relating form tocontent in poetic language. The first account of this prominence is seen throughidentifying its position in the two prosodic forms of metrical and non-metricalpoetry. Foregrounding has been seen as a significant feature in literarycreation. Following Bradford (1997) the analysis undertakes three stages ofanalysis as ‘discovery procedures’, ‘naturalization’, and ‘judgment’ (renamed inour work as ‘remarks’). The first level examines the degree of the tensionbetween the two patterns. In the second level, i.e. naturalization, the analysisgoes on turning the peculiar language of the poem into that of the ordinary,which means making sense of a text. This translation of the poetic language hasbeen shown to be considerably rooted in elements of form in the classical verse,and of content in modern free verse. The intervening type has thus been judgedto exist somewhere between the two. The third level, namely ‘remarks’evaluates the degree of the poet’s success in managing the tension between thetwo patterns.