Blank ver 无韵体
Blank ver is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly ud with blank ver has been iambic pentameter (as ud in Shakespearean plays).
The first known u of blank ver in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his interpretation of the neid (c. 1554). He was possibly inspired by the Latin original, as classical Latin ver (as well as Greek ver) did not u rhyme; or he may have been inspired by the Italian ver form of Versi Sciolti , which also contained no rhyme. The play, Arden of Faversham (circa 1590 by an unknown author) is a notable example of end-stopped blank ver.
Christopher Marlowe was the first English author to make full u of the potential of blank ver, and also established it as the dominant ver form for English drama in the age of Elizabeth I and James I. The major achievements in English blank ver were made by William Shakespeare, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pent
ameter, and Milton, who Paradi Lost is written in blank ver. Miltonic blank ver was widely imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson (in The Seasons) and William Cowper (in The Task). Romantic English poets such as Willia歌颂母亲的诗
m Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats ud blank ver as a major form. Shortly afterwards, Alfred Lord Tennyson became particularly devoted to blank ver, using it for example in his long narrative poem "The Princess", as well as for one of his most famous poems: "Ulyss". Among American poets, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank ver in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to free ver.
Russian bylinas are in blank ver.
History of English blank ver
Gorboduc (1561), the first blank-ver tragedy, illustrates how monotonous such ver could be. Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century. Marlowe was the first to exploit the potential of blank ver for powerful and invol
ved speech:
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Who influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.
(Doctor Faustus)
Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank ver for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in this exchange from King John, one blank ver line is b
roken between two characters:
My lord?
A grave.
He shall not live.
Enough.
(King John, 3.3)
Shakespeare also ud enjambment increasingly often in his ver, and in his last plays was given to using feminine endings (in which the last syllable of the line is unstresd, for instance lines 3 and 6 of the following example); all of this made his later blank ver extremely rich and varied.
Ye elves of hills, brooks, st怎么辨别方向
anding lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do cha the ebbing Neptune, and fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you who pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by who aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green a and the azured vault
Set roaring war - to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt;...
(The Tempest, 5.1)
This very free treatment of blank ver was imitated by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and led to general metrical looness in the hands of less skilled urs. However, Shakespearean blank ver was ud with some success by John Webster and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson, meanwhile, ud a tighter blank ver with less enjambment in his great comedies Volpone and The Alchemist.
Blank ver was not much ud in the non-dramatic poetry of the 17th century until Paradi Lost, in which Milton ud it with much licen and tremendous skill. Milton ud the flexibility of blank ver, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as the:
into what Pit thou est
From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of tho dire Arms? yet not for tho
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage
Can el inflict do I repent or change,
Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind
And high disdain, from nce of injur'd merit,
That with the mightiest rais'd me to co母爱记叙文
ntend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adver power oppos'd
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
(Paradi Lost, Book 1)
Milton also wrote Paradi Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank ver.
