Eduard Sievers
Encyclopedia
Eduard Sievers was a philologist of the classical and Germanic languages
. Sievers was one of the Junggrammatiker of the so-called "Leipzig School". He was one of the most influential historical linguists of the late nineteenth century, and is best known for his recovery of the poetic traditions of Germanic languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon
.
was a system of five patterns which indicated how the poetic line (or, more specifically, the poetic half-line) was to be emphasized or unemphasized, e.g. stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed, unstressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed, etc. This seemingly elementary analysis was significant because of the difficulty experienced by previous scholars in identifying where the poetic line began and ended. Germanic poetry, in its written form, rarely indicated the line division.
Moreover, even though it was clear that some words were of greater importance than others and were thus supposed to be stressed, there were few limitations on the length of the unstressed sequences, which made the identification of the poetic line even more difficult. In Shakespearean verse, for example, a typical poetic line is:
Here stressed and unstressed syllables follow one after the other. In Old Saxon, however, a line might read:
In this example, five syllables occur between the stressed syllables LI- and LOG.
Sievers examined these issues in great detail, as well as the questions of relative stress and clashing stresses in poetry.
Sievers himself later abandoned this type of analysis it in favor of Schallanalyse
, or 'sound analysis,' a system which was understood by very few apart from Sievers and those close to him.
Sievers’s work on the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon poetry influenced the poetry of Ezra Pound
, in particular in poems such as his version of The Seafarer.
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
. Sievers was one of the Junggrammatiker of the so-called "Leipzig School". He was one of the most influential historical linguists of the late nineteenth century, and is best known for his recovery of the poetic traditions of Germanic languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
.
Sievers' analysis
Sievers' analysisSievers' Theory of Anglo-Saxon Meter
Eduard Sievers developed a theory of the meter of Anglo-Saxon Alliterative verse. This most likely would have been the theory of Anglo-Saxon prosody that Ezra Pound would have been familiar with....
was a system of five patterns which indicated how the poetic line (or, more specifically, the poetic half-line) was to be emphasized or unemphasized, e.g. stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed, unstressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed, etc. This seemingly elementary analysis was significant because of the difficulty experienced by previous scholars in identifying where the poetic line began and ended. Germanic poetry, in its written form, rarely indicated the line division.
Moreover, even though it was clear that some words were of greater importance than others and were thus supposed to be stressed, there were few limitations on the length of the unstressed sequences, which made the identification of the poetic line even more difficult. In Shakespearean verse, for example, a typical poetic line is:
-
- it IS the EAST and JUliET’s the SUN
Here stressed and unstressed syllables follow one after the other. In Old Saxon, however, a line might read:
-
- LIthi an thesaru LOGnu
In this example, five syllables occur between the stressed syllables LI- and LOG.
Sievers examined these issues in great detail, as well as the questions of relative stress and clashing stresses in poetry.
Sievers himself later abandoned this type of analysis it in favor of Schallanalyse
Schallanalyse
Schallanalyse , "sound analysis,") was a method of poetic analysis developed by the renowned philologist Eduard Sievers, and described in detail in his book Ziele und Wege der Schallanalyse . Sievers had previously developed a system of "five types" to describe the rhythmic patterns found in Old...
, or 'sound analysis,' a system which was understood by very few apart from Sievers and those close to him.
Reception
His analysis was widely, though not universally, accepted among philologists.Sievers’s work on the rhythms of Anglo-Saxon poetry influenced the poetry of Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, in particular in poems such as his version of The Seafarer.
External links
- Eduard Sievers at www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de (German language)