[gabriel666smith]

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a robot suit to ride around and fight things with."

I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains. There always seem to be tourists there visiting from all over the world. That is really heartening.

She was very innovative. Maybe even underrated as a craftsperson at the sentence level. My favourite trick that I believe she invented is slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter, essentially unnoticed. Lots of people have copied that from her.

And class-pressure narratives will never not be relevant to people's lives. She's a very very humane storyteller in that respect.

I am slightly biased - she's my great aunt (x 6). Used to find that embarrassing but now I feel quite proud.

[ifh-hn]

I'm not well read, and don't think I'd be able to finish any of the classics. As such I have no clue what "slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter" means. I came here for the robots.

[altairprime]

You know how in Disney movies they shift smoothly from talking to singing? It’s just like that, only instead of the bass beat to the character’s song starting to play, her ‘prose’ (think ‘non-poetry words’, aka what most people consider books to be full of) shifts smoothly into Shakespeare-like syllable emphasis patterns. Listen for the percussion notes starting about ten seconds into https://youtu.be/79DijItQXMM and imagine that instead of him bursting into musical song, he burst into chanting a limerick:

There once was a demi-god, Maui / Amazing and awesome: I’m Maui // Who stole you your fire / and made your days lighter // Yes, thank you, you’re welcome! Love: Maui

It’s a bit odd of an analogy, but limericks and “Iambic pentameter” are specific instances of an underlying language architectural thing, so it should be just enough to convey the basics of that “prose to Iambic” sentence. And: if you’ve ever watched “Much Ado About Nothing” from the mid-90s, that’s 100% Iambic.

(If you’re an English major, yes, I know, this is all wrong; it’s just a one-off popsicle-sticks context-unique mindset-conveyance analogy-bridge, not step-by-step directions to lit/ling coordinates in your field.)

[eszed]

English major here, and your post is great. It's not complete, of course, but you've hit everything a beginner needs to know to get over the first hump of understanding, in a way that "expert" knowledge sometimes gets in the way of communicating. I doubt the reply I was writing in my head would have been better, and probably would have been worse, so thank you for jumping in.

But (because I have to go there - and I promise getting to this paragraph wasn't the point of the compliments above), Much Ado isn't entirely in verse: the clowns - lower class, all of them (Dogberry, et al) - speak in prose. So, the next layer of the onion, for anyone who wants to pick at it, is noticing in what circumstances writers use different registers, and why. Austin does the same thing: Mr Collins speaks in flat, prosy sentences, except (if I recall correctly) when he talks about his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I think that has a subconscious effect, even on people who couldn't name an iamb, but once you pick up on it, it's one of those "ooh!" sorts of moments where you get a glimpse behind the authorial curtain.

[altairprime]

Thank you :)

and, yes, what you said! I vaguely recognize that from studying the written form but certainly I didn't remember it here beyond “I bet this needs a conditional or something”.

ps. I am especially proud of the unplanned field pun!

[jpfromlondon]

>prosy

prosaic.

[eszed]

Negative, ghost rider:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/prosy

[gabriel666smith]

This is a great example, and not odd as an analogy at all. It surfaces something subtle.

Language architecture is really interesting, I think, for programmers who have bought into the LLM hype in any meaningful way. It's an important field to have a sense of.

Tokenizers, for example, generally have multi-syllabic tokens as their base-level, indivisible unit.

You rarely see this mentioned when LLM capability against non-coding tasks is discussed, despite it being deeply important for prose construction.

Not to mention, putting language models aside, that the vast majority of code is written in language with a logical grammar. The disciplines are highly linked.

[regularfry]

The AI generated front page of HN posted yesterday had some generated comments in at least one of the threads that scanned and rhymed. It's clearly there in whatever model that was, and while it might just have been a confluence of having seen a specific word pair a certain distance apart in the learning data to account for the rhyming, I'm having a hard time explaining away the construction of a coherent meter.

[altairprime]

The Judoon have such a lovely language, though!

[beng-nl]

Your desire to share knowledge and the pleasure of what you’re describing really shows; thank you for using your time so generously.

[keymasta]

Two broad categories, verse and prose.

Prose is mostly focused on describing meaning using any words that serve to do so.

Verse is more concerned with structural factors like rhythm, tonality, and structure within syllables, or within types of sound, or parts of speech. Other linguistic devices which look at details beyond the strict meaning of the words, like rhyme or many other factors (you could even use visual spacing for example) can be considered in verse.

Within verse there's the concept of iambs. I think of it as a tuple of two syllables which are said, weak-strong. Pentameter means ten syllables, and iambic means in groups of weak and strong. Most of Shakespeare is written like this. Also English naturally sounds iambic a lot of the time.

Iambic pentameter sounds like this:

  I watched a bird attempt its beak upon
  The end of fake too-moist baguette in vain
  For it was sick of stale McDicks tossed on
  It endlessly maintained its rationed pain

  While others in its bobbing flock for scraps
  Of birds fought for the thrill squawked on and on
  Till cannibals among their kind rejoiced
  To find cousins in mayonnaise so long

Normally you'd also look at rhyme structure if writing a legit Shakespearean sonnet [2] but I fired this one out as in the style of fast food. So this is technically iambic pentameter but not technically a sonnet.

Or like a particular Shakespearean sonnet [0]. Or like any of them, [1]

[0] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnet.I.html

[1] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnets.html

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/shakespe...

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Minor nitpick: "pentameter" means 5 parts, and each part is an iamb in iambic pentameter, so it's 5 parts where each part is 2 syllables in a weak-strong pattern. That results in 10 syllables, but "pentameter" doesn't mean 10 syllables alone.

[baruz]

Not with that attitude you won’t! But dip your toe in, _Pride and prejudice_ is pretty light and breezy while having some depth to it.

[ifh-hn]

I don't know. All I remember from school is absolutely hating being forced to read, and understand/interpret, thing like shakespeare and Jane Austin. But then again I now like a lot of the vegetables I used to hate as a kid...

My daughter loves the classics, me, science fiction and fantasy.

[Tarsul]

Just read Treasure Island. It's a classic but one that is easy to comprehend and also timeless.

[baruz]

_Pride and prejudice_ hits for me similar notes as those for fantasy and historical fiction, though of course it is commenting on contemporary issues with no magic (except the magic of love), alas. It’s like entering a foreign society where you may have to infer why people are acting the way they do. Now that you’re not in school, no one is forcing you to write essays on what you read, or even to understand or interpret what is going on in the narrative! Cool, huh?

[justonceokay]

It’s like incel mentality except applied to literacy

[scandox]

She made free indirect speech [1] the cornerstone of the English language novel. She is recognized as a titanic figure. I don't know who would underrate her!

What I find strange is that people enjoy her books as romantic comedies because the world she represents is incredibly claustrophobic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech

Edited for clarification

[hodgesrm]

> I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains.

I have believed for a long time that Austen is broadly popular because her works deal with issues of human relations and economic prosperity at the heart of modern, bourgeois existence. The draw is summed up in this excellent quote from the article:

> They also both, mostly, focus on characters who have enough privilege to have choices, but not enough power to escape circumstances.

That's a perceptive description of middle class life. The movie "Clueless" is an illustration of how easily Austen's insights translate to a society that is superficially very different from hers. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clueless

[PapstJL4U]

She is although simply a joy to read. Witty remarks and well written.

"Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition". - from S&S

Who wasn't in a situtation where they felt arguing would do nothing? John Green asked: "Who doesn't want a friend as witty as Jane Austin to comment on life?

[hodgesrm]

Austen's command of language and empathy for her characters is second to none. I love the hook at the end of this passage from Pride and Prejudice.

   ``And of this place,'' thought she, ``I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. -- But no,'' -- recollecting herself, -- ``that could never be: my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me: I should not have been allowed to invite them.'' This was a lucky recollection -- it saved her from something like regret.

https://pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppv3n43.html

[viraptor]

> to see how wildly popular her work remains

There's an annual Jane Austen festival there too - it really brings people from all over the world. Very fun event even if you're just +1 to someone who's into it.

[neilv]

I upvoted for the perfect first line for this HN post. That you're related, makes sense.

[vintagedave]

Do you have an example of her writing moving into iambic pentameter in prose, please?

I googled for examples from her books but — search results are terrible.

[gabriel666smith]

Of course! This is my favourite example, from Sense and Sensibility, because it announces itself with "burst", and that's the novel where she deploys it most:

"Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease."

She 'tends towards Iambic' in literary criticism terminology. So it's not a strict Iambic, more like a 'soft Iambic' which is a term I can't remember if it's actually used in lit crit, or if I made it up.

You need to drop the "at" syllable, in that example (which you would do in vocal rhythms of English, then and now), for it to be a true Iambic.

There's lots of good writing on the King James Bible "tending towards" Iambic, which should be more Google-able, and her father was a preacher, so that's a likely influence there, I would speculate.

Some others I like that I remember:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." - Persuasion (I think?).

"Till this moment I never knew myself." - Sense and Sensibility again? I can't remember off the dome. That's a gorgeous strict Iambic.

There are much longer examples - whole paragraphs that close chapters of Sense and Sensibility specifically. I'll try and find the version I have notations on when I'm next around my books. She regularly slips into it to close moments of emotional crescendo - "Cursus" being the Latin term for an analogous technique, when it was more frequently used in a more stylised manner.

[constantius]

One of those comments that let you glimpse the depth behind things and the joys that lie in exploring those depths.

Thanks for taking the time. I will spend tomorrow evening reading.

[gabriel666smith]

What a nice thing to say, thank you. A pleasure to be even a vague signpost toward work that's so rewarding. Enjoy your evening(s)!

[FreakLegion]

> "Till this moment I never knew myself." - Sense and Sensibility again? I can't remember off the dome. That's a gorgeous strict Iambic.

"Till this moment I" and "I never knew myself" would be trochaic and iambic, respectively, but they don't strictly scan when you overlay the 'I's. You can of course get them to by e.g. eliding 'moment', or adding a line break and taking '-ment' as a feminine ending, or just scanning according to the writer's idiosyncrasies.

And individual writers can be very idiosyncratic here. Shakespeare, for example, if I remember right, lets monosyllabic words occur in almost any position. Disyllabic words on the other hand can have any combination of stresses (iamb, trochee, spondee, or pyrrhic), but only if they're foot-aligned. And so on.

The field has probably evolved since I was last part of it, but I'll still recommend Kristin Hanson's work in this area: https://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf. (Actually the second time I've recommended Hanson on HN. The last time was, let's see, 6 years ago!)

[gabriel666smith]

+1! Hanson is one of the gold-standards on this. It is idiosyncratic, you're right - to the speaker / reader as much as the writer (is my contention with their work).

Personally, I do take 'ment' as a feminine ending there, or - more specifically - the T sound runs into the I sound when I read it, the way it would in the predominantly Italian stuff she's likely referencing.

I'm very much with Gordon Lish on Shakespeare's monosyllabic drift words - that he was educated in Latin, and integrating Germanic vocabulary into that structure relatively freely, and further analysis is almost impossibly complex. That said, there's a lot of moments in those where I'd kill to hear where the stress landed when first performed.

This specific area is really one of those "What if?" moments in literary criticism, I think - I believe it would be incredibly beneficial for the form if this was the dominant focus of critique, rather than thematic stuff. On the rare occasions I teach at universities, this is all completely new to students, which sucks - it's entirely possible to approach prose theory with the same rigour as music theory, and it seems (in the UK, at least) to be very quickly becoming a lost art!

[vintagedave]

Thankyou. Scanning those phrases, I am trying to read the cadence and understand this -- this is very much a comment to return to and ponder. Thankyou very much for answering my question, too.

[pfdietz]

Go ahead, be proud! Be Austen-tatious!

[WalterBright]

I recall this from one of Donald Westlake's books:

"He stopped on a dime and collected 5 cents change."

[hodgesrm]

That sounds like a line Raymond Chandler would have used. His turn of phrase is also delightful.

[mrsvanwinkle]

laughed and was warmed by the end reveal. i support gushing over literature in HN