Once again allow me to start off giving credit where it’s due; much love to Abi again.
Now, we have already spoken about how concrete poetry uses line divisions to fulfil a specific purpose but that is only one way the line divisions of a poem can be significant. Double syntax occurs when enjambment happens – when the grammatical sentence flows over the line endings of a poem. However, not all enjambment has double syntax. Double syntax only occurs when there is an uncertainty about how the sentence should be read because the word at the end of the line could grammatically belong to either the phrase before it or the phrase after.
This idea is seen in reader response theory which focuses on the temporal nature of reading; reading is an active thing to do and only by moving from one word to the next can we understand that there may be several meanings to a poem. It is by moving to the next line of a poem that we can discover new meanings to a poem because, as we have said earlier, line divisions are important features of poetry that are specifically put in place by the poet to perform a certain function. Stanley Fish explains that ‘what is really happening depends upon a moment of hesitation or syntactic slide, when a reader is invited to make a certain kind of sense only to discover (at the beginning of the next line) that the sense he has made is either incomplete or simply wrong.’ I’m going to use Mary Wroth’s poem ‘The Countess of Mongomerie’s Urania’ to demonstrate double syntax.
Oh Strive not still to heap disdain on me,
Nor pleasure take your cruelty to show *
On hapless me, on whom all sorrows flow,
And biding make, as give, and lost, by thee:
Alas, even grief is grown to pity me;
Scorn cries out gainst itself, such ill to show,
And would give place for joy’s delights to flow;
Yet wretched I all tortures bear from thee.
Long have I suffered, and esteemed it dear,
Since such thy will; yet grew my pain more near:
Wish you my end? Say so, you shall it have;
For all the depth of my heart-held despair *
Is that for you I feel not death for care;
But now I’ll seek it, since you will not save.
The effect of double syntax requires a reader to be unsure about how to construe a word or phrase because it could belong to both the line before and the line that follows it. This is created by the use of splitting up a phrase in between a transitive and an intransitive verb. Furniss and Bath explain that ‘an intransitive verb has no object [and so acts upon itself]…a ‘transitive’ verb is one that takes a direct object.’ Bear with me and I will explain this better with an example from the poem.
As you can see, there are several instances of enjambment in Wroth’s poem and they are highlighted with an asterisk. However, only the first instance is also an example of double syntax.This is because when reading the second line alone, ‘show’ is an intransitive verb because it has no object upon which to attach itself and so his ‘cruelty’ is simply showing itself. However, once you read on and find out that the cruelty is in fact being shown ‘on hapless me’, the verb is connecting the subject and the object and thus become ‘transitive’. It is this that creates the double syntax.
I have already explained that in just having read the second line it appears the man’s cruelty is being shown in general, in other words is apparent for all to see. It implies that the man takes pleasure in acting nasty and disdainful and so this first reading could make the reader accept the poetic voice’s opinion of this man immediately. However, when reading on, we discover that the man’s cruelty is being shown only to the poetic voice; in other words only she sees this side of him and he is not actually an intrinsically horrible person. It can be assumed that the issue being discussed is unrequited love – it is his inability to return her feelings that is him showing his cruelty to her. Upon reading this, the reader may then lose their original assumption that the man is cruel and may see this a lot more realistically.
However, Furniss and Bath reiterate several times that there is no one correct meaning to be found in poetry. Therefore it is important to consider both meanings at the same time whilst reading. In this example, the reader’s first impression of the man’s cruel nature allows them to feel empathy with the poetic voice throughout the rest of the poem, while at the same time understanding that she is in fact talking about a man who actually (if one considers the depths of feeling that the poetic voice has for him) seems quite admirable.
So, that’s basically double syntax. I found it a pain in the backside when trying to get my head around it at first, but it’s actually a deceptively simple concept once you’ve got it. As a side note, for anyone who is thinking ‘Why not use poems for your exam to use as examples?’ both W. H. Auden’s ‘Look Stranger’ and Mary Wroth’s ‘The Countess of Mongomerie’s Urania’ are in the anthology I have to use but, since I used them in my presentation, I cannot use them in my exam, hence why I haven’t mentioned them on the ‘About’ page. But still, don’t complain about unexpected poems – it just makes things more interesting.
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