to estimate their scope and appreciate their relative importance in the subsequent development of French verse 1. On the other hand I venture to think that the part of my book dealing with the period from Marot to Verlaine will be found to contain a full and accurate presentment of the problems involved in the study of more modern French versification, based on the results of modern scholarship and a personal investigation of the sources. I trust also that the treatment of those portions of older French versification omitted by the author of the Versbau, with regard to which I have had to rely almost exclusively on my own research, may be considered equally satisfactory. As the different authorities I have utilized are enumerated in the Bibliography prefixed to the book, I may be excused for mentioning here only those to which I have constantly referred. Of these I have derived most help from Stengel's admirable contribution to Gröber's Grundriss, while of the dissertations and papers accessible to me the most useful were Langlois' De artibus rhetoricae rhythmicae in Francia ante litterarum renovationem editis, and Zschalig's Die Verslehren von Fabri, Du Pont und Sibilet, whose conclusions, however, I was in nearly every case able to check or supplement from a firsthand acquaintance with the most important early French treatises on poetry. I also found Souriau's L'évolution du vers français au xviie siècle useful, 1 I may say that such has been my practice throughout as regards the examples; in the few cases where I have departed from that course I have duly acknowledged my source. and frequently consulted, seldom without profit, Bellanger's Études sur la rime française, and Jeanroy's Les origines de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen-âge. Occasional reference has likewise been made to the standard French manuals-Quicherat, Becq de Fouquières, De Gramont, &c.-but, as their treatment of the subject differs diametrically from the one here adopted, the debt I owe them is not large. In fact it is in that divergence of treatment that lies my chief excuse for the publication of the present work. It will be noticed that I have not included a chapter on the origins of Romance metres. The omission is intentional, and due to the conviction that no advantage could accrue, in a book of this scope, from the discussion of problems which are as yet not only far from settled, but which indeed have not advanced much beyond the purely hypothetical. On the other hand, it seemed to me that it was no longer possible to ignore the reforms advocated and carried out by the group of the Symbolists during the last twenty years. These reforms, inspired as they are in the main by the laudable intention of doing away with the glaring antagonism existing between the traditional canons of French versification and modern pronunciation (as a consequence of which French verses are frequently only true on paper), have made it difficult, if not impossible, for future poets to write verses according to rules justified three hundred years ago, but which have since become meaningless or only serve to disturb poetic rhythm. If I am taken to task for having devoted too much space to the poems with a fixed form, my answer is that the incomplete and as far as certain of these forms are concerned-positively misleading statements in the existing standard treatises are responsible. In other cases I have felt bound to insist on certain points, obvious enough to a Frenchman, in the interests of English students. Finally, it should be mentioned that no normalization of the orthography has been attempted in the citations from older French; in all cases the spelling of the various editions quoted has been adopted with the slight modification that consonantic i and u are replaced by the lettres ramistes j and v (as in modern spelling), and the acute accent placed on e whenever its insertion made for clearness. There remains the pleasant task of thanking Professors T. F. Tout and James Tait of Owens College, whose kindly advice did much to encourage me in my task. Thanks are also due to Mr. E. E. Kellett, of the Leys School, for valuable suggestions, and to Mr. A. R. Ainsworth, of King's College, Cambridge, for reading through a large part of the proofs. L. E. KASTNER. MANCHESTER, March, 1903. E mute (e, -es, -ent) at the end of the line Occasional elision of the e of the enclitic pronoun le E mute between consonants in the body of a word E mute (-e, -es, -ent) at the end of a word before a con- E mute following an accented vowel E mute in the body of a word following an unaccented 4-38 The essential condition of good rime Cases in which the final syllable of a feminine rime can Differences in this respect between Old and Modern Words can only be coupled in rime if they also give a Occasional violation of this rule Rime between long and short vowels Rime between diphthongs and the simple vowels which Rime between diphthongs and the corresponding dissyl- Rime between words the final consonants of which are Rich rime. |