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The Verse-Line as a Whole Unit in Working Memory, Ease of Processing, and the Aesthetic Effects of Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2014

Nigel Fabb
Nigel Fabb*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Extract

Verse is text which is divided into lines. In this paper I explore a psychological account of how verse is processed, and specifically the hypothesis that the text is processed line by line, such that each line is held as a whole sequence in the limited capacity of working memory. I will argue that because the line is processed in this way, certain low-level aesthetic effects are thereby produced, thus giving a partial explanation for why verse is often a highly valued type of verbal behaviour. The general goal is to address the question of what literary form is, from a psychological perspective, and how the textual presence and psychological processing of form can contribute to particular aspects of the aesthetic experience of verse.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 75: Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art , October 2014 , pp. 29 - 50
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2014 

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References

1 Thanks to Alan Baddeley, Rip Cohen, Greg Currie, Graham Hitch, Jonathan Hope, Elspeth Jajdelska, Christian Obermeier, Sinead Rhodes, Gary Thoms, Barbara Tillmann, Stefano Versace, and two anonymous reviewers.

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18 Very few metres allow more than 15 syllables to the line, hence no more than 15 words. The major exception is the metres of Classical Sanskrit, as cited earlier; note however that the longest line quoted here is 21 syllables by metre, but only five and a half words long, because of the extremely long words of the language.

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