An Essay On French Verse: For Readers of English Poetry

by Jacques Barzun

In An Essay on French Verse–For Readers of English Poetry , Jacques Barzun addresses the baffling English prejudice against French poetry. Barzun’s many-faceted and entertaining study muses on six hundred years of French verse, its rules and forms and how they evolved. It also has significant sections on the French language itself, its sounds and difficulties; on verse music in language generally; on the character and achievements of the greatest French poets; and finally, on the social and political conditions that encouraged successive innovations, including the prevailing wordwide practice of free verse. The Essay , moreover, draws not only on a lifetime’s reading, but on personal reminiscences as of stuffy poetry lessons in the French lycée; of the poet Apollinaire expounding his views on language to amuse the child sitting on his knee; of the author’s great-grandmother telling him about proper French pronunciation, as it was in her youth, eighty years earlier. In sum, Barzun’s book goes a long way toward answering the question posed in 1917 by A. E. Housman to André How is it that every nation has produced poetry except France?

Genres: Poetry, France

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Works of French-American educator, author, and historian Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (see Charles Robert Darwin, Karl Marx, and Richard Wagner) (1941) and The American University (1968).

He presented ideas and culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques...

Reviews

[Michael]

Elegant, simple, yet erudite, this book is a great favorite of mine.