La versification (review)

In this manual, Jean-Michel Gouvard’s intention is to give a synoptic presentation of the latest studies on versification. True to its intention, the book lays out developments over the past twenty years.

G follows faithfully the traditional division appearing in various manuals dealing with versification: The first three chapters focus on verse study, while the other three engage in an examination of strophes.

The first two chapters study vowels and accent, respectively, which define the metre of a verse. G takes into account the latest contributions in phonology in order to describe the structure of syllables and accentuation.

In the third chapter, G attempts a historical and theoretical presentation of various metres between one and seventeen syllables. He first examines various types of simple verses, then a number of compound verses, and lastly, the occurrence of caesura in French poetry.

Ch. 4 constitutes an introduction to the study of strophe and deals with the definition of rhyme and its various avatars over the past centuries. G seeks to identify numerical vowels and metrical accent as a means of measuring the metre of a verse and of highlighting the modalities by which verses are paired with each other, by means of rhyme.

In the fifth chapter, G cites, from a historical and theoretical point of view, the main strophical forms of French literature and highlights the ruptures and continuities from the Middle Ages to the present day. He examines the modalities of rhythmical combinations of some principal strophes in French poetry by drawing up a typology and specifying the historical role of all forms.

The last chapter completes the preceding one by examining the factors introducing formal variations in a strophe and/or a poem. These factors are: change of the length of verses; strophical alternation, which is applied to a poem comprising at least two types of distinct strophes; alternation in gender designating the processes of rule in masculine and feminine rhymes within a strophe and/or a poem. The chapter ends with an examination of vers libre, as it was applied in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and from the end of the nineteenth century to our times. G thus prepares himself to describe less regular poetical forms than those examined in the whole manual.

The work emphasizes several aspects of French versification and discloses the main rules of verses and strophes. It is a well structured work and so recommended for students of French poetry and readers with an interest in the analysis and history of poetical forms.