As described by Jakobson , meter and rhyme are two of the most important and most characteristic features of poetry. Not surprisingly, these two features have received much interest from literary and language researchers alike. Though being quite different in form, both features rely on a similar type of mechanism to structure poetry. They represent patterns of recurrence or similarity, i. Rhymes represent pairs of words that are phonologically identical from the last accented vowel to the end of a word e.
Besides their potential effect on aesthetic experience, they have been claimed to influence recall and comprehension of words e. For instance, several studies have shown that target words rhyming with a preceding prime word are easier to process than non-rhyming target words e.
Furthermore, rhymes seem to contribute to the organization of lexico-semantic information in the mental lexicon e. In a word recognition experiment, the authors reported that not only target words, but also the rhyming competitors were activated to a similar degree. This suggests that word cohorts with similar rhyme structure are activated in a comparable manner.
In poetry, end rhyme structures a poem at the level of the verse by strongly marking the ends of single verses and hence the onset of the caesura between two verses cf. We suggest that rhyme — next to the already mentioned effects — highlights the overall metrical gestalt of a verse 2 , at least in poems of the type we used in the present experiment.
Moreover, the phonological matching constitutive of rhyme produces a pattern of recurrence between two ante-caesura-syllables of different verses, which in turn makes the higher order gestalt of stanzas more predictable and memorable. In other words, end rhymes in metered poetry temporally structure both single verses and their configuration within the multi-verse unit of the stanza.
They do so by placing additional emphasis on metrical patterning and by producing a phonological resonance between two selected words, or syllables, in the ante-caesura position, i. Finally, since antiquity rhetoric and poetics postulate that rhetorical elaboration of whatever sort should make the message of an utterance more salient and more emotionally involving. Meter generally refers to the perception of alternating accented strong or unaccented weak syllables Selkirk, ; Port, For instance, the syllabotonic meter, which is the most common form of meter in English and German poetry, is defined both by the alternation of stressed and unstressed events within a metered foot and the number of stressed syllables in a verse line.
Whereas rhyme structures poetry in a symmetrical way at a larger time scale, meter provides an asymmetric temporal marking of poetry on a smaller time scale see Fabb, There is substantial evidence that metrical patterning in many forms of poetry is beneficial to cognitive processes e. Regular metrical structure, for instance, is easier to remember and to reproduce than irregular metrical structure Essens and Povel, It plays a role in language acquisition e.
A small number of studies e. In summary, both rhyme and meter are associated with structuring perceptual input by drawing attention toward prosodic stimulus properties and facilitating cognitive processing. Ease of processing could result in a reduced working memory load as well as predictions of upcoming stimulus events. Furthermore, proponents of aesthetics and cognitive poetics postulate that similarity, symmetry, and other types of recursive patterning based on rhyme and metrical structure are basic features of beauty e.
Therefore, rhyme and the metrical structure of poetry should impact aesthetic liking and should also render poetry more emotionally involving. However, so far no systematic investigation has been undertaken to show how these two structural features of poetry as well as their interplay with lexical content impact the aesthetic and emotional processing of poetry 3. We therefore set out to investigate whether there is a link between specific structural properties of poetry and aesthetic and emotional responses to it.
In order to address this question, we collected a set of 60 stanzas taken from nineteenth and twentieth century German poems. On the basis of these four verse stanzas we produced highly controlled versions that differed in lexicality real words vs.
Participants listened to the pre-recorded stanzas and rated them on four scales: liking aesthetic appreciation , strength of emotional response intensity , emotion perceived as represented, or expressed in the stanzas perceived emotion , and emotion actually felt while listening to the stanzas felt emotion.
If the hypotheses put forward by classical rhetoric and cognitive poetics are correct, stylistic figures such as meter and rhyme should influence aesthetic and emotion ratings. More specifically, we should expect to find higher aesthetic value ratings, higher emotional intensity ratings, higher perceived emotion, and higher felt emotions ratings for rhyming as compared to non-rhyming stanzas.
Similarly to the rhyme manipulation, we would also expect effects of meter on all four rating categories based on propositions put forward by the cognitive fluency theory. Specifically, we would expect higher rating for metered as compared to non-metered stanzas. However, the meter manipulation, while perceived and detected by participants in a pretest, could also be perceived as less salient compared to the rhyme manipulation.
As a consequence, effects of meter in the different rating categories could be weaker. If structural features interact with lexico-semantic content of poems, this would falsify the proposition put forward by the cognitive fluency theory that structural features are important contributors to aesthetic liking and emotional responses per se. However, based on evidence from emotion research we expect lexicality to impact the emotion ratings, as it is known that the valence of a word can influence emotional responses to it e.
The aesthetic liking rating, however, should be rather unaffected, as it should only capture the stylistic quality of the stanzas. As this study is of exploratory nature, it is difficult to clearly predict potential interactions of the factors. However, based on assumptions in cognitive poetics, both stylistic factors and semantic content should contribute to the emotional response in a perceiver. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that those ratings that are concerned with the perceived and felt emotional content of the stanzas may be specifically prone to interaction between lexicality and the stylistic factors.
Nineteen native German-speaking participants were paid to participate and signed a written informed consent following the guidelines of the Ethics committee of the University of Leipzig. Two participants were excluded from further statistical analysis due to technical problems during data collection.
The remaining 17 11 female; 19—30 years, mean The basic stimulus set contained four-verse stanzas from nineteenth and early twentieth century German poetry e.
These samples usually constituted the first stanza of the respective poems. The stimuli were controlled for metrical form iambic vs. Only nouns and verbs were accepted in the rhyming position. We also excluded poems that were too well-known to control for familiarity.
For each of the stanzas four different versions were constructed based on the factors METER metered vs. The altered versions were constructed according to the following principles: the original words and word order in the stanzas were kept identical whenever possible. The non-metered versions were obtained by adding one or two syllables to each verse, e.
For the non-rhyming versions, the first word of each rhyme pair was substituted. Apart from modifying rhyme and meter, great care was taken that other stylistic features, such as metaphor and syntactical figures e. Table 1. Table 2. The pseudo-words were constructed by substituting the original consonants with different ones while keeping vowels constant.
German phonotactic rules were considered to guarantee the pronounceability of the pseudo-word verses for more details on the pseudo-word construction, see Raettig and Kotz, A professional actor produced the stanza versions with natural intonation. Each stanza was recorded several times and the best sounding recordings were subsequently chosen and normalized to 78 dB to minimize differences in intensity between the stanzas. Furthermore, separate acoustic analyses of duration, maximal pitch, minimal pitch, and mean pitch were calculated to ensure that critical parts of the different verse versions, i.
Table 3. Statistical values mean, range across the critical, final words of each line for all stimulus conditions. In order to verify and optimize the quality of the meter manipulation, a rating study was performed.
Based on the results of the rating, 30 stanzas with rhyming couplets as well as 30 stanzas with alternating rhymes were selected for a final stimulus set, which showed the largest difference in the rhythmic regularity rating for the metered and non-metered versions.
Participants listened to each stanza version via headphones. They were instructed to rate the stanzas spontaneously along four dimensions: liking, intensity, perceived emotion, and felt emotion.
For the liking rating, they were told to judge the overall aesthetic effect of the stanza taking into account the tonal and rhythmic properties five-point Likert-scale: 1 — very bad to 5 — very good. For the intensity rating, participants had to assess the strength of the emotional response to the stanzas five-point Likert-scale: 1 — very weak to 5-very strong.
On the perceived emotion scale participants had to indicate the emotion they perceived as represented or expressed in the stanzas five-point Likert-scale: 1 — very negative to 5 — very positive , whereas they had to rate the emotion they actually experienced while listening to the stanzas on the felt emotion scale five-point Likert-scale: 1 — very negative to 5 — very positive.
The rating took place in two sessions. In the first session, participants judged the pseudo-word versions of the stanzas poems, i. In each session the stanzas were presented in mini-blocks of six stanzas of the same type, all in all resulting in 40 mini-blocks per session. The whole rating lasted approximately 2.
Each of the different ratings was subjected to a repeated-measures ANOVA with the factors lexicality real words vs. Figure 1. The A shows the main effect of meter, whereas the B shows the main effect of rhyme.
This result suggests that not only meter and rhyme, but also the lexicality of a stanza influences the strength of the emotional response to a stanza.
Specifically, the emotional response to real word stanzas was stronger than that to pseudo-word stanzas. Figure 2. The A illustrates the main effect of lexicality, the middle one B the main effect of meter, and the right one C shows the main effect of rhyme. Figure 3. The A shows the main effect of rhyme, whereas the B depicts the interaction of lexicality and meter, with the left part showing the main effect of meter for real world stanzas and the right part showing the main effect of meter for pseudo-word stanzas.
In summary, rhyming stanzas seem to be perceived more positively than non-rhyming ones. In contrast, on the scale of perceived emotion, meter only had an effect in the pseudo-word stanzas. Interestingly, non-metered stanzas elicited more positive ratings than metered ones on this scale. A step-down analysis of this interaction showed a significant main effect of rhyme.
Felt emotion, therefore, only seemed to be influenced by rhyme in a sense that rhyming stanzas elicited a more positive emotional response than non-rhyming ones regardless of the varying contents of the stanzas. This effect was stronger in the pseudo-word than real word stanzas. Figure 4.
The left part shows the main effect of rhyme for the real word stanzas, whereas the right part depicts the main effect of meter for the pseudo-word stanzas. The current study set out to investigate whether lexicality, meter, and rhyme as core components of poetry influence the aesthetic and emotional response to poetry in non-expert listeners.
For this purpose, participants listened to a set of eight different versions of stanzas from nineteenth and early twentieth century German poetry and judged them on four different scales: liking, intensity, perceived emotion, and felt emotion.
Rhyme significantly influenced liking, intensity, perceived emotion as well as felt emotion ratings, with rhyming stanzas leading to a more positive aesthetic and emotional evaluation.
Similarly, regular meter enhanced aesthetic liking and more intense emotional processing as compared to the non-metered versions of the stanzas. In contrast to meter and rhyme, lexicality, as hypothesized, did not impact the overall aesthetic appraisal of the stanzas, but only influenced the emotional ratings, i.
Here are some common examples of rhyme forms:. Tyger Tyger, burning bright , In the forest of the Night. Mother Goose and other nursery tales feature rhyme as a foundation for language acquisition, reading, and listening comprehension for children.
In addition to enhancing speech and literacy skills, these rhyming poems and tales generate interest and appreciation for artistic use of language. Here are some examples of rhymes in nursery tales:. When people use rhyming words in everyday speech, the purpose is generally to appeal to a sense of rhythm in language and use rhyming sounds to create memorable expressions. Here are some famous examples of rhymes in common phrases :. In writing, rhyme is most closely associated with poetry.
This literary art form is considered quite difficult to master, and although not every poem features rhyming words or patterns, rhyme is an important literary device for poets. To develop rhyme as a writing skill, there are helpful strategies to use:. In the ages before the written word, rhyme also assisted with memorization, a role it still performs today. Not all poems rhyme, and not all rhymes are poetry; rhyme is also employed in songwriting and advertising copy, for example.
The use of rhyme in poetry, however, is the most common application of both, learned by most people while they are still children. To many people, in fact, any rhyme is a poem and vice versa. Rhyming verse is one of the oldest literary forms, predating the establishment of writing itself. There is good reason for this: Many primitive cultures used oral, or spoken, narratives to relay important aspects of their history and culture to younger generations. Rhyme is a powerful mnemonic, or memory aid, so many of these narratives were put in rhyming-verse form by bards and poets.
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