How can we use metre to help interpret Piers Plowman?
The metre tutorials have helped you learn what sound-effects have to be present for the poem to count as metrical: the caesura, the four-ish heavily stressed syllables, the way that each line ends with a heavily stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, and the alliteration. This is all fine, but is just the baseline for literary criticism: you need to know this so that you can then see the exceptions to it: what stands out.
In this tutorial, we'll take the metrical sound-effects as the basis for spotting extra-metrical sound-effects: the ones that don't have to be there, and which are therefore especially interesting.
For each line of Piers below, identify at least one extra-metrical sound-effect, or metrical oddity, and write what you think its effect might be. Spot more than one if you can :-) (NB you can't actually save what you write here. I just want to make it really clear that you'll benefit from writing about these lines rather than just looking at them and thinking thoughts.)
When you're happy with your answer, click to see what Alaric thought of. Alaric won't have spotted everything, and you might have different interpretations of sound-effects from him. That's fine--but hopefully bouncing your ideas off his will give you ideas which you can use on each subsequent line.
You can hear Alaric reciting these lines in Middle English here.
1: In a somer sesoun, whan softe was the sonne
What did Alaric think?
- The last heavily stressed syllable, unusually, alliterates.
- This soundplay is increased by the fact that somer, seson and sonne all contain nasals. Perhaps just a bit of ornament to decorate the opening of the poem?
- That said, almost all the consonants in line 1 are continuants rather than stops: they can be said continuously (thus the fricatives s and f and the nasals m and n). This gives a melliflous, flowing tone, which fits with the soft warmth of summer depicted in the text.
2: I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were
What did Alaric think?
- Sh has a similar place of articulation to s (they're both sibilants) and is also a fricative, making the listener feel that the previous line is still flowing on. We're still going with the mellifluous tone then.
- But now the alliteration is more regular (there's no extrametrical alliteration on the last stress) as the verbs arrive and the poem gets underway.
- Nice soundplay between the first stressed syllable in each verse: shoop and sheep. Maybe just decorative? But it also emphasises the causal relationship between the verb shoop and Will looking like a sheep.
3: In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes
What did Alaric think?.
- There's soundplay between the endings of habite and heremite: just as shooping makes a sheep, a habit makes a hermit.
- All the vowels in the a-verse are short, and moreover there's a lot of unstressed vowels (at least 8 unstressed for 2 stressed), which makes the long stressed vowel of unholy stand out. This calls attention to Will's paradoxical (and problematic) identity as an unholy hermit.
- The last heavily stressed syllable (the wer- of werkes) is the same as the last heavily stressed syllable of line 2 (in were). These lines are starting to look seriously highly decorated!
4: Wente wide in this world wondres to here
What did Alaric think?.
- The last stressed syllable of line 3 began with w-, and line 4 picks up on this, alliterating on w-: as with lines 1-2, similarities of sound flow across the line-breaks.
- The end of the line (here) picks up on the alliterating sound of line 3 (so we have habits, hermits, holy, works; wide, world, wonders, hear). This gives a sense of closure to the pair of lines, which fits neatly with the fact that we're at the end of a sentence. Sound and syntax work together.
- Moreover, line 4 rhymes with line 2 emphasising the sense of closure: Langland isn't required to rhyme, so when he chooses to it's noteworthy.
- The opening four lines of the poem are looking pretty virtuosic, ornate with sound-effects which tie the lines together.
5: Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles
What did Alaric think?.
- Three unstressed syllables (ac on a) before the first heavily stressed syllable: this sounds a bit more rushed than the previous lines, fitting the change of tone signalled by 'ac' ('but').
- The sense of disjunction is also heightened by the fact that there are no unstressed syllables between the stressed syllables of May morwenynge: this clashing stress is a change from the more melliflous alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables dominating so far.
- That said, there's some continuity too: the alliterating sounds are still continuants, and the last stressed syllable begins with h- echoing the here- of the previous line.
6: Me bifel a ferly of fairye me thoghte
What did Alaric think?.
- There are two ways to pronounce the a-verse here. In normal prose, verbs usually carry lower stress than nouns, so the first heavily stressed syllable would be ferly: 'me befell a FERly'. If so, the beginning of this line has a lot of unstressed syllables, maybe making it feel rushed, a bit like the opening of line 5.
- Alternatively, we could read the line with special emphasis being put on befell: 'me beFELL... a FERly'. In this reading, Langland forces us to linger on the verb, slowing the pace down and building suspense.
- A good helping of extrametrical sound-play emphasises that strange and special things are afoot: the consonants l and r are repeated across befel, ferly and fairie.
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