The Fetters of Rhyme - by Rebecca M Rush (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Long before the English fought a civil war over the meaning of liberty, poets were debating the benefits of constraint and the risks of bond-breaking. Early modern poets imagined rhyme as a band or fetter, and compared rhyme to the bonds that tie individuals to political, social, and religious communities. Because they believed that verse forms reflected cosmic and political patterns, early modern authors maintained that formal choices were never ideologically neutral. The charged nature of early modern forms is particularly visible in the dynamic history of the couplet: In the 1590s, poets like John Donne took up the Chaucerian couplet to signal their sexual and political radicalism, but by the middle of the seventeenth century Royalist poets had co-opted the couplet as a tool for reinforcing affective ties to king and country"--

Book Synopsis

How rhyme became entangled with debates about the nature of liberty in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry

In his 1668 preface to Paradise Lost, John Milton rejected the use of rhyme, portraying himself as a revolutionary freeing English verse from "the troublesome and modern bondage of Riming." Despite his claim to be a pioneer, Milton was not initiating a new line of thought--English poets had been debating about rhyme and its connections to liberty, freedom, and constraint since Queen Elizabeth's reign. The Fetters of Rhyme traces this dynamic history of rhyme from the 1590s through the 1670s. Rebecca Rush uncovers the surprising associations early modern readers attached to rhyming forms like couplets and sonnets, and she shows how reading poetic form from a historical perspective yields fresh insights into verse's complexities.

Rush explores how early modern poets imagined rhyme as a band or fetter, comparing it to the bonds linking individuals to political, social, and religious communities. She considers how Edmund Spenser's sonnet rhymes stood as emblems of voluntary confinement, how John Donne's revival of the Chaucerian couplet signaled sexual and political radicalism, and how Ben Jonson's verse charted a middle way between licentious Elizabethan couplet poets and slavish sonneteers. Rush then looks at why the royalist poets embraced the prerational charms of rhyme, and how Milton spent his career reckoning with rhyme's allures.

Examining a poetic feature that sits between sound and sense, liberty and measure, The Fetters of Rhyme elucidates early modern efforts to negotiate these forces in verse making and reading.

Review Quotes

"This is a compelling read; Rush draws on a plethora of contemporary poetic handbooks, writers' remarks in letters and poems about their own choices of poetic form and her own superbly microscopic close readings. . . . A subtle, thoughtful and well-supported account of the ideological implications of poetic form."---Peter J. Smith, Times Higher Education

About the Author

Rebecca M. Rush is assistant professor of English at the University of Virginia.