THE THEORY OF CHAUCER'S iambic pentameter, and by extension of the English pentameter tradition, proposed in Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser's article in College English for December 19661 is not one to be taken lightly. The article is intricately argued, in correct and toughly objective linguistic terms; it asks the right kind of questions about the nature of a meter, and in my opinion gives some very good answers to some of these questions. It is an interesting, a substantial, and even an important article; it demands a very close reading (such as I hope I have given it), and I must confess it commands my admiration. Nevertheless, I have some objections to urge-not so much on the score of inaccuracies in the argument, so far as the argument reaches, but on that of a certain inadequacy to the full idea of the English iambic pentameter. My aim is furthermore to conduct my conversation or debate with Halle and Keyser in such a way as to promote one perhaps paradoxical emphasis of my own concerning what for the moment I allude to, without explanation, as a notoften recognized co-presence or co-operation, in English iambic verse, of two controlling conceptions, both a rule and a norm (the latter of which is the center of the rule but not itself a rule). It will make at least for clarity in the direction of my discourse if I begin by somewhat abruptly challenging an assertion made in the introductory paragraphs of Halle and Keyser's article.

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