Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory

ABSTRACT

This article is part of a cluster that draws material from the recent conference Metre Matters: New Approaches to Prosody, 1780–1914. It comprises an introduction by Jason David Hall and six articles presented at the conference, whose aim was to address renewed scholarly interest in versification and form across the long nineteenth century, as well as some of the methodologies underpinning it. The papers included in the cluster look both to the minutiae of Romantic and Victorian metres and to their cultural intertexts. The conference, hosted by the University of Exeter's Centre for Victorian Studies, was held 3–5 July 2008.

The cluster is made up of the following articles: Jason David Hall, 'Metre, History, Context: Introduction to the Metre Matters Cluster'.

Emma Mason and Rhian Williams, 'Reciprocal Scansion in Wordsworth's "There Was a Boy" '.

Ross Wilson, 'Robert Browning's Compounds'.

Margaret A. Loose, 'The Internationalism of Ernest Jones's Dialectical Prosody'.

Nancy Jiwon Cho, 'Gender and Authority in British Women Hymn-Writers' Use of Metre, 1760–1900'.

Ashley Miller, 'Involuntary Metrics and the Physiology of Memory'.

Summer Star, ' "For the Inscape's Sake": Sounding the Self in the Metres of Gerard Manley Hopkins'.

***

Metre has played a prominent role in the recent turn towards embodiment in criticism of nineteenth-century poetry. The regular rhythms of poetry have an effect on the reader's body, both echoing the rhythms of the heart and assisting in the process of memorization. But what happens when metre is missing or disrupted? This paper examines the relationship between poetry and physiological memory, extending our understanding of poetry's impact on the body. In theories of the physiology of memory and hallucination, poetry becomes irregular but autonomous, subsuming the reader's body to its own textuality. Similarly, irregular metre (as in Coleridge's Christabel) promotes a kind of involuntary repetition – which is tied, in these studies, to the materiality of print.