Musicality or the unknown: Utilising ideas from the field of phonology in an approach of musicality in poetic texts
This article attempts to illuminate the widely discussed, but also ambiguous, concept of musicality in poetry by sharing ideas from the field of phonology. The approach is based on two axes: First, there is an observation of the intonation, which is the feature that describes the tonal variation in a text, and a comparison of intonation with melody in music. More specifically, utterances that appear with an intonation other than the one that simple statements have (e.g. interrogative, imperative, negative sentences) are discussed in terms of their contribution to the structuring of the poem as a whole, and this with an emphasis on the musicality of the poem. Secondly, by borrowing ideas that involve intertextuality, this article observes poetic texts under the lense of phonaesthetics, in an attempt to approach “musical references” and set questions about their role in poetry.
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