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« Show all entries for JANUARY 2009
Friday, 16 January 2009 00:39:03
Disclaimer: this entry, like nearly all my log entries, is not a recounting of what I did today, so I'm sorry if that's what you browsers were looking for. The following is even more boring. :) I have always wondered why rhyming poetry in English sounds childish--why the brain automatically goes into sing-song kindergarten mode, besides associating it with childhood. I was studying the differences between Modern and Middle English in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in rhythm, alliteration and rhyme scheme when it suddenly came to me: Rhyming poetry is now seen as infantile because unlike Latin, English has very few complex words which rhyme. Thus we're reduced to 'hate', 'great' etc. Full rhymes in complex words are rare, and partial rhymes never really caught on. Therefore end-rhymed poetry sounds childish in and of itself, since the vocabulary is mostly contained at that level. It is perfect for limericks, ditties and children's stories, but perhaps not sophisticated works of art. Even reading some of the great rhyming poets of the 19th century who wrote in English, it still sounds contrived and maybe a little trite. Another reason: despite having absorbed a lot of French (and Latin) beginning with the Norman invasion, the fundamental poetic form of Anglo-Saxon poetry(therefore English) is alliterative and rhythmic, not end-rhyming, a trend that has persisted strongly more than a thousand years later. Anyone out there asleep yet? zzzzzzzzz.... Class dismissed. Ha.
Friday, 16 January 2009 06:48:24
So I've not been about the verse much lately, but I've recently been reminded of why I love it so much. I was given the Serenity RPG for christmas (by the way I also got a 'cunning' hat and Dr. Horrible) and reading through the book made me realize how inactive I've been here of late. Or make that absent. My passion for the verse had taken a bit of a back burner to a number of other things but this just turned up the heat. I'm now planning on running a game with my friends. To top it all off, I was distracted from housework yesterday by a friend deciding he just HAD to watch my Firefly while he was about. You almost forget how amazing it is sometimes. Than five minutes of any given episode brings it all back. Anyway, it's good to be back.
Friday, 16 January 2009 18:49:09
I just ordered my map of the Verse from quantum Mechanix. Is it really all it is said it will bee? I hope so.