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Extrametricality and Internally Layered Feet in Lavorare stanca anapestic meter| title | Extrametricality and Internally Layered Feet in Lavorare stanca anapestic meter |
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| start_date | 2026/05/27 |
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| schedule | 10h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle D513 |
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| summary | In 1943, Cesare Pavese claimed to have developed a new poetic form in Lavorare stanca (1936): a variable-length anapestic meter, ranging from three to six feet, for which there is no clear precedent in the Italian poetic tradition. Although the collection is grounded in a regular anapestic pattern, it systematically diverges from it in two respects: (i) the presence of an additional syllable between the second and third metrical foot, and (ii) the occurrence of stress in foot-initial position, which is typically unstressed in canonical anapestic meter. This presentation investigates whether these deviations should be interpreted as superficial irregularities or as evidence of a structurally distinct variant of the anapestic pattern. It also addresses the theoretical status of ternary metrical feet and examines whether the additional syllables can be analysed as extrametrical.
The first aim is to explore these issues at the interface between phonology and meter (Nespor and Vogel 2007), with specific reference to Italian anapestic verse. The analysis then considers the applicability of the Internally Layered Foot model (Martínez-Paricio 2013, Martínez-Paricio and Kager 2015; De Sisto, Martínez-Paricio and Topintzi 2025) to the metrical structure of Lavorare stanca, and evaluates its relevance for other cases in Italian poetry. The second aim is to investigate the perceptual status of the additional syllable through an empirical experiment on syllable salience, based on a minimal-pair comparison task involving 70 participants. Finally, the presentation proposes a unified account of the meter within Bracketed Grid Theory (Fabb and Halle 2008; Versace 2014), developing an algorithm for loose anapestic meter that derives all attested line types from a single underlying representation (Giordano and Versace 2026). |
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| responsibles | Dell, Benini |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2026/05/12 09:45 UTC |
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