Natalie,
I should like to comment on a few points made by Karl and Craig. I hope they will not in any way disparage the facts they have expressed. Yet I think it is an error to consider our world as "post-mythic."
Is your impression that Frost violated his own law? The law cannot be taken literally anyway, since "one sound" is monotonous in the sense of a single syntactic construction. It may be a useful exercise to paraphrase his compound and complex sentences as simple sentences. Your idea was to alter the declarative to more than just the other moods of interrogative and imperative, but also subjunctive. As Karl mentioned, the subjunctive mood is now a relict of a number of semantic functions now carried by the modal auxiliaries in the three remaining moods.
I think that Karl's use of the term "prolapsarian garden" was appropriate for what modern culture may still value in the myths of the past. Teachers especially should rise above the philosophy that rejects myth as a means to understanding truth. Even modern scientists accept the kinds of myths seen in the thought experiments that Einstein created as a way to understand theoretical concepts better. Kuhn proclaimed the whole of science as a paradigm created by scientists to replace the less useful or precise analyses of the past. I believe that myth is the domain of the poets. Myths paint pictures to express an underlying realty not captured in the languages of mathematics. The purpose of the arts seems ideally to give expression to some ineffable truth that the artist has become aware of. Fables are not taken as true depictions of physical reality, but stories to teach principles of truth. Too often the false garb of myth is its cause for rejection out of hand by the literalist. The success of drama and theater relies on the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the audience. There the line between truth and fiction can be fine indeed.
To me Robert Frost's poem was telling us about the expressions of body language. His use of the Garden of Eden myth to refer to origins may have lent a rather sexist tone. Ironic it is that song birds are naturally male and human sex objects naturally female. But the functions of the limbic system in both are the same -- survival of the species.
Bruce
--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
From: "Hancock, Craig G" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: query on mood in a Robert Frost poem
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:43:26 +0000
Karl,
It's also highly possible that the garden is a contemporary garden and the speaker is looking back at how the human voice of Eve might have influenced the birds' song and carried it through all these years. I didn't think of "he" as referring to Adam, but to a sort of distanced speaker (third person narration.)
"Could" can also refer to ability. It's not that he has permission to believe it, but the ability to, which is a poetic leap of sorts--to find a sort of mythological truth that sustains its relevance in a post mythic world. To assert it is one thing, to believe it another. And "could," of course, brings up the possibility of not believing. If something is a simple declarative truth, it doesn't have the hesitancy that "could" implies.
I agree that it's best to use a term like "subjunctive" for a particular way of expressing conditionality. We certainly have other ways to do that, and the modals have evolved as adjuncts in that process.
Craig
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karl Hagen
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: query on mood in a Robert Frost poem
I would be careful about applying the term "subjunctive" too loosely for an unreal situation. That's rather like calling any sentence where the subject isn't the agent a passive voice. Rather than talking in terms of unreality, it might be more helpful to think about epistemic, deontic, and dynamic modality (see the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language for more detail).
In the most obvious reading (at least the one that seems most salient to me) both "would" and "could" have dynamic modality. In other words, we're referring to qualities and attitudes of the subject (Adam). Relative to the basic time described (in the prelapsarian garden), "would" indicates that the declaration has yet to occur. Presumably, he will be making this declaration after the fall, when the threat of loss becomes real.
The big contrast that I see here is less between factuality and unreality as between declaration and belief. The first line suggests that there is a possibility Adam could say something that he doesn't believe (i.e., lie), even if he's not doing it in this case. That possibility reinforces the notion that the speaker's stance is one of reflecting back upon the garden from the fallen world.
You can probably sketch out alternative readings in which "would" is epistemic (i.e., indicating that this is a conclusion of the speaker rather than direct assertion of truth), and "could" is deontic (giving permission), although they seem to me to make less sense in context.
The expression "Be that as may be" is subjunctive, but it's also a fossilized idiom. Everything else is declarative, but I don't see this poem as an ironic violation of Frost's statement, as they hardly constitute "simple" declarative sentences. Their syntax is reasonably complex, with embedded clauses and phrases displaced from their ordinary order.
Karl
On Oct 10, 2013, at 3:17 AM, Natalie Gerber wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I would appreciate the group's expertise in weighing in on two questions of grammar regarding a Robert Frost poem that relies heavily on the modals would and could.
>
> Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same
>
> He would declare and could himself believe That the birds there in all
> the garden round From having heard the daylong voice of Eve Had added
> to their own an oversound, Her tone of meaning but without the words.
> Admittedly an eloquence so soft
> Could only have had an influence on birds When call or laughter
> carried it aloft.
> Be that as may be, she was in their song.
> Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed Had now persisted in the
> woods so long That probably it never would be lost.
> Never again would birds' song be the same.
> And to do that to birds was why she came. (CPPP 308) Certainly, the
> modals--along with expressions like be that as may be and admittedly and negators--function as hedges, qualifications, but I wonder whether we might say they make sentences in the text subjunctive, expressive of irreality, or whether we might say they indicate the speaker's stance toward his statement while remaining within the range of expression within the indicative.
>
> Also, I would appreciate your confirming for me that the poem is largely or entirely written in declarative sentences. The question interests me because Frost once wrote, "The simple declarative sentence used in making a plain statement is one sound. But Lord love ye it mustn't be worked to death. It is against the law of nature that whole poems should be written in it. If they are written they won't be read."
> The poem strikes me as a successful violation of this law.
>
> In full disclosure, I am seeking your advice toward an essay I am revising that compares Frost's investment of belief in sound to Wallace Stevens' and William Carlos Williams'. The emphasis is upon Frost's notion of sentence sounds, but I'd like to get the grammar right.
>
> Thank you very much for any light you can shed.
>
> With best wishes,
> Natalie
> Natalie Gerber
> Associate Professor, English
> Secretary-Treasurer, Wallace Stevens Society Associate Editor, Wallace
> Stevens Journal
> phone: (716) 673-3855
> email: [log in to unmask]
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
