Information AboutEnjambment |
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The following lines from '' The Winter's Tale '' (''c.'' 1611 ) are heavily enjambed: I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown. Meaning flows from line to line, and the reader’s eye is pulled forward. Enjambement creates a feeling of ''acceleration'', as the reader is forced to continue reading after the line has ended. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like “flow-of-thought” with a sensation of urgency or disorder. In contrast, the following lines from Shakespeare ’s '' Romeo And Juliet '' (''c.'' 1595 ) are completely end-stopped: A gloomy peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk and these sad things. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished. Each line is formally correspondent with a unit of thought — in this case, a clause of a sentence. End-stopping is more frequent in early Shakespeare: as his style developed, the proportion of enjambement in his plays increased. Scholars such as Goswin König and A. C. Bradley have estimated approximate dates of undated works of Shakespeare by studying the frequency of enjambement. A master of enjambement, E.E. Cummings combined it with the use of punctuation as an art form: i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) : ''i fear'' no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) For another example of enjambement in poetry, look at the opening lines of Catullus XIII , ''ad Fabullum'': Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus, si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam cenam, non sine candida puella et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis. Here is an English translation, roughly preserving word order: : You will dine well, my Fabullus, at my house : in a few, if the gods favor you, days, : and if you bring with you a good and great : dinner, not without a white girl : and wine and wit and laughs for all. The phrase ''si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam / cenam'' (“if you bring with you a good and great / dinner”) is sharply enjambed between the third and fourth lines. |
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