The Montessori Elementary Material / The Advanced Montessori Method

(Translation: "A trumpet call sounds to the right; a trumpet calls answers to the left; all around the earth shakes with the charge of horses and men. Here a standard is broken out to the breeze; there another advances waving; here a line of troops appears, there another rushing against it.")

2. Dodecasyllables: example:

(Translation: "Ruello, Ruello, as fast as you can! O storm-winds of heaven, lend us your wings; my loved one is lying near death; onward, onward, onward, Ruello!")

3. Eight syllable lines (ottonario): example:

(Translation: "O deserted wood! To your shade the sorrowing heart comes to find some rest in your cool silence.")

4. Six syllable lines (senario): example:

(Translation: "Radiant with hope, the latest comer treads on the ashes of a dead world, pursuing the glowing aspirations of ages not yet ripe.")

Note: In the above selections the vowels in broad-faced type have been marked with an accent by the child, to indicate the rhythmic beat.

We found, on the other hand, that greater difficulty is experienced by the children in lines where the syllables are in odd-numbers (imparisyllabics), the hardest of the Italian lines being the hendecasyllable, which is a combination of the seven syllable and the five syllable line, fused together with all their great varieties of movement.

We established the following gradation of difficulties:

1. Seven syllable line (settenario): example:

(Translation: "Now already flowery Spring returns; again the lovely zephyrs dance amidst the grass and blossoms.")

2. Five syllable line (quinario): example:

(Translation: "As a vivid symbol of the home, they were passed on by the dying mother to her daughter or to her son's wife.")

3. Nine syllable line (novenario): example:

(Translation: "Alas, for thee, O brother! Yonder, songless days await thee. Ah no, have no fear of the dead: they love thee! The living only shouldst thou fear!")

4. Hendecasyllable: example:

(Translation: "Through me ye enter the city of sorrow; through me ye enter the realm of eternal grief; through me ye enter the regions of the damned").

The typical ending of these various lines is the trochee (, verso piano). The iambic (, verso tronco) and the dactyllic (, verso sdrucciolo) endings (requiring respectively one syllable less and one syllable more than the verso piano) constitute occasional variations. We have found that these rarer lines are recognized rather as curiosities than as difficulties by the children who easily refer them to their respective normal types. They are accordingly presented in our material along with the common verses of trochaic endings. Our illustration of the five syllable line given above showed specimens of the dactyllic ending (sdrucciolo, ). Here is another example of alternating trochaic (piano) and dactyllic endings:

(Translation: "There's a very strange little bird up in that tree! Why, it's a little child!")

In the following decasyllables, the trochaic ending alternates with the iambic (tronco):

(Translation: "I will take thee far, far away on the wings of my song: there, among the flowery fields of the sacred Ganges, I know of a beautiful spot").

Some difficulty arose, however, when we came to lines with alternations of parisyllables and imparisyllables; though this new movement aroused real enthusiasm among the children, who greeted it as a new and strange music. It often happened that after the pleasurable effort of analyzing a poem with lines alternating in this way, the pupils would choose as "recreation" the study of lines of even-numbered syllables. Here is an example of the new type:

(Translation: "There were three hundred, young and strong! And now they are dead! That morning I was gleaning in the fields; I saw a boat at sea,—a steamer flying the white, red and green. It stopped at Ponza, remained a while and then came back—came back and approached the shore. They came ashore in arms, but to us they did no harm").

While the rhythmic accents were being studied, we found that the discovery of the cæsura (interior pause) formed an interesting recreative diversion. In fact this work aroused so much enthusiasm that the children went from exercise to exercise, continuing at study for extended periods, and far from showing signs of weariness, actually increased their joyous application. One little girl, in the first six minutes of her work, marked the cæsura of seventy-six ten-syllable lines without making a mistake. An abundant material is necessary for this exercise. Example:

(Translation: "From the damp atria, from the ruined squares, from the forests, from the hissing forges, from the fields bathed with the sweat of slaves, a scattered horde of men suddenly is roused. They listen, lift their heads, startled at this strange increasing roar").

The step forward to the perception of the syllabic units of the line is a purely sensory phenomenon: it is analogous to marking the time of music without taking account of the measure divisions. Syllabiating according to rhythm and beating on the table with the fingers solve even the subtler difficulties such as dieresis and synalepha, in recognizing the rhythmic syllables. Examples:

We print this verse in the above form, because it was thus divided by a child in his very first spontaneous effort at syllabiation. As a matter of fact, we present the material normally according to graded difficulties, using over again for this purpose the materials used in the study of accents. At this point also the accents themselves suddenly acquire a new interest, for the child is able to observe on "what syllable they fall." Thus his metrical study approaches completion, for now he can readily acquire the nomenclature of metrics and versification: dodecasyllable, hendecasyllable, etc. Then, combining his knowledge of the numbers of syllables and the location of the rhythmic accents, the child is at the point of discovering the rhythmic laws of verse construction. We were expecting the children to begin producing definitions like the following: "The dodecasyllable line has twelve syllables and four accents which fall on the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh syllables," etc. The spontaneous impulse of the pupils led instead to the construction of "mirrors" or "checkerboards" like the following:

The additional step to using the symbols of metrics was an easy one, and a graphic diagram resulted much as follows:

The next development is a complete study of the stanza or strophe in the form of a summary; the number of lines, the rhymes, the accents, number and location of the syllables. To distinguish between the stanzas is also to classify them, which becomes a pleasing task for the children.

One little girl, who was making a summary study of four terzets of Dante, suddenly called the teacher to inform her with an expression of complete surprise: "See, the rhyme always begins at the last accent!" She had before her:

So in metrics also the children, following the natural inclinations of their growth, pass from sensory discipline, to intelligent cognition, and graphic representation. Then they become the "explorers of their environment," the "discoverers" of general laws.

Translator's Note: The basis of Italian verse is in the syllable count, and the rhythmic accent. In English verse, however, the question of the syllable count is dependent on a much more complex consideration: syllable length; and syllable length, in its turn, is conditioned not only by the phonetic situation in and around the syllable, but by rhetorical stress as well. It is clear that Signora Montessori's experiments on the simpler Italian line have little direct bearing, save as an illustration of method, on the pedagogy of English Metrics. For whereas, the principal classifications of Italian lines involve merely the problem of syllabiation (complicated by dieresis and synalepha), with a numerical terminology (quinario, ottonario, decasillabo, etc.), the study of English versification demands an analysis of measure (feet) and of number of feet, with a terminology relative to each: trochee, iambus, dactyl, spondee, anapest, etc., hexameter, pentameter, etc., to mention only the most obvious elements of a science which, applied even to simple English verse, soon becomes extremely complicated. How much, then, of the study of English metrics, beyond the elementary concepts of stanza and rhyme, should be included in the Montessori Advanced Method, and what order of presentation of facts should be followed, still remains to be experimentally determined.

However, the most illuminating fact, as regards method, which detaches from Signora Montessori's experiments with metrical forms, is that long parisyllables are more readily analyzed by children than imparisyllables; and secondly that short imparisyllables prove easier than long imparisyllables. We might wish more explicit evidence that the hardest parisyllable is easier, therefore more natural, than the easiest imparisyllable—implied in Signora Montessori's presentation of this subject. Even so, her conclusions are interesting, and from more than one point of view. It will be recalled that the most ancient and the most fortunate of the meters used in French, Spanish, and Provençal poetry is precisely the decasyllable (Song of Roland, the Provençal Boecis, etc.), whereas the favorite line of old Italian popular poetry was the octo-syllabic verse. These are both parisyllables, though the succession of theses, or rhythmic beats, is not quite analogous to that of the modern Italian verses used in this experiment. It would seem, in fact, as though the children initiated by Signora Montessori into metrical studies, were actually traversing the earlier experiences of their Latin race.

Doubtless the reason why the parisyllable submits more readily to rhythmic analysis than imparisyllables, is that when the syllables are in even numbers, the line tends to reduce to two simple rhythmic groups—the decasyllable to groups of 4 and 6, with two rhythmic beats in each group; the dodecasyllable to groups of 6 and 6 (therefore of 3 and 3 and 3 and 3); the octosyllables to groups of 4 and 4; the six syllable to groups of 3 and 3. The imparisyllables on the contrary are rarely capable of such division—of such monotony, if you wish. They lend themselves to more complex rhythm, especially to "paragraphic" treatment. They are distinctly the rhythms of erudite, "cultivated," "literary" poetry.

We should suspect, accordingly, that what appears in the above experiments as length is in reality reducibility to simpler forms; and that lines capable of such reduction should be given first in an adaptation of Signora Montessori's method. It is, however, highly improbable that in English, where the only constant element in rhythm is the stress and not the syllable count, the line compounded of two simpler rhythmic groups should prove easier for the child than either of those simpler groups themselves. We see no reason to assume, for instance, than an eight-stress line, reducible to two four-stress lines, should be more readily analyzed than a four-stress line; or that a seven-stress line, reducible to a four-stress and a three-stress line, should be easier than either one of these. In fact, the predominance of these simpler elements in the English feeling for these longer groups is indicated by the fact that such compound lines are commonly broken into their constituent parts when printed (cf. The Ancient Mariner), even in cases where the isolation of these parts is not emphasized and rendered natural by rhyme. It will be observed that in the Montessori experiment the order of presentation was first, three-stress (anapestic), then four-stress (iambic), then two-stress (iambic) lines. This situation happens to correspond to that found in the commonest popular English verse, which gives undoubted preference, as witness our nursery rimes, to three-stress and four-stress iambics. Two-stress lines constitute in reality four-stress lines divided by rhyme; just as, in poems of distinctly literary savor, the two-stress line is further reducible by interior rhyme to two one-stress lines.

Three-Stress Lines (Trimeter)

Four-Stress Lines (Tetrameter)

Examples: Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon; Scott, The Lady of the Lake; Milton, Il pensieroso.

Examples: Longfellow, Hiawatha; George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy.

This line is much more common in its catalectic form:

Examples: Goldsmith, Retaliation; Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib.

Examples: Byron, Song of Saul; Dryden, An Evening's Love.

Two-Stress Lines

Examples: Herrick, To the Lark; Shakespeare, Midsummernight's Dream (Bottom's Song).

Examples: George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy; Campion, Art of Poesie.

Examples: Shelley, Arethusa; Scott, The Lady of the Lake (Coronach).

Examples: Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade; Longfellow, Saga of King Olaf.

One-Stress Line

Example:

Seven-Stress Lines (Heptameter)

Examples: Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic; Byron, Stanzas for Music; Kipling, Wolcott Balestier; Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner.

Example: Swinburne, Clear the Way.

Example: Swinburne, The Birds.

Example: Anonymous.

Six-Stress Lines (Hexameter)

Example: Wordsworth, The Pet Lamb.

Example: Swinburne, The Last Oracle.

Examples: Tennyson, Maud; Swinburne, The Garden of Cymodoce.

Examples: Swinburne, Hesperia; Longfellow, Evangeline.

Eight-Stress Lines

Example: William Webbe, Discourse of English Poetrie.

Examples: Tennyson, Locksley Hall; Poe, The Raven.

Example: Swinburne, March.

Example: Longfellow, Golden Legend, 4.

Five-Stress Lines (Pentameter)

Examples: Milton, Paradise Lost; Bryant, Thanatopsis, etc., etc.

Examples: Browning, One word more; Tennyson, The Vision of Sin.

Examples: Browning, Saul; Tennyson, Maud.

Very rare in English.

While the remainder of the exercises in syllabication and graphic transcription, as described by Dr. Montessori, would seem to follow naturally on the above exercises in the analysis of line stress, it is clear that additional attention must be given to questions of terminology. For the metrical syntheses performed in the tables at the end of the preceding section will not be possible for English poetry unless the child is able to identify the kinds of feet and the kinds of lines. We suggest accordingly two supplementary drills with the card system familiar to the child from his exercises in grammar. The first consists of a list of words, each on a separate card, with the tonic accent marked. Each word with its accent represents a foot (iambus, trochee, anapest, dactyl), indicated on the card in graphic transcription beneath the word:

Corresponding to each word is another card bearing simply the graphic transcription and the name of the foot. The exercise, of the greatest simplicity, is to pair off the cards, arranging the words in a column on the table, putting after each the card that describes it. The cards, when properly arranged, read as follows:

A second stage of this exercise consists in offering a similar series of cards where, however, the word-cards are without the indication of the tonic accent and without the graphic transcription of the measure:

An identical exercise is possible for whole lines. The first stage consists of naming the lines accompanied by the metrical transcription with cards containing simply the transcription and the name of the meter; in the second stage, the same lines are given but on cards without the graphic transcription: for example:

1st stage