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Accentual Verse and Czech Language

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020

Abstract

Chief subject of this work is a detailed description of the metrical structure of accentual verse and its place in the system of versifications. Definitions of this metrical system in the Czech theory of verse are compared to the international concepts of accentual verse.

Then the category of isochrony is described. Isochrony is a property of language, on which the priciple of accentual verse is based on.

In the next part of the work I present an overview of the types of accentual verse in Polish, English, Russian and German. Special attention is paid to the category of strict stress-verse, its relation to the accentual verse and also to some of Czech literary works.

Further in the work I focus on metrical analysis of the texts written by six czech poets, which are more or less based on the accentual principle (F. L. Čelakovský, K.

J. Erben, P.

Bezruč, F. Gellner, O.

Theer and J. Kainar).

The most attention is paid to the drama Faëthon by O. Theer.

I elaborate on author's comments and critical reviews of his contemporaries, comparing them with the modern metrical descriptions. The last part is devoted to the problem of translating accentual verses into Czech, connecting this versification with "sylabotonic" translations of quantitative verse and also oral character of accentual versification in general.