This module is intended for use when encoding texts which are
entirely or predominantly in verse, and for which the elements for
encoding verse structure already provided by the core module are
inadequate.
The tags described in section include elements for
the encoding of verse lines and line groups such as stanzas: these are
available for any TEI document, irrespective of the module it
uses. Like the modules for prose and for drama, the module
for verse additionally makes use of the module defined in
chapter to define the basic formal structure of a text,
in terms of front, body and back elements and
the text-division elements into which these may be subdivided.
The module for verse extends the facilities provided by these
modules in the following ways:
a special purpose caesura element is provided, to
allow for segmentation of the verse line
(see section )a set of attributes is provided for the encoding of rhyme scheme
and metrical information (see sections
and )a special purpose rhyme element is provided to support
simple analysis of rhyming words (see section )
Structural Divisions of Verse Texts
Like other kinds of text, texts written in verse may be of widely
differing lengths and structures. A complete poem, no matter how short,
may be treated as a free-standing text, and encoded in the same way as
a distinct prose text. A group of poems functioning as a single unit
may be encoded either as a group or as a text,
depending on the encoder's view of the text. For further discussion,
including an example encoding for a verse anthology, see chapter .
Many poems consist only of ungrouped lines.
This short poem by Emily Dickinson is a simple case:
1755
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,One clover, and a bee,And revery.The revery alone will do,If bees are few.
Often, however, lines are grouped, formally or informally, into
stanzas, verse paragraphs, etc. The lg element defined in the
core tag set (in section ) may be used for all such
groupings. It may thus serve for informal groupings of lines such as
those of the following example from Allen Ginsberg:
My Alba
Now that I've wastedfive years in Manhattanlife decayingtalent a blanktalking disconnectedpatient and mentalsliderule and numbermachine on a desk
It may also be used to mark the verse paragraphs into which longer
poems are often divided, as in the following example from Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's
Frost at Midnight:
The Frost performs its secret ministry,Unhelped by any wind. ...Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling SpiritBy its own moods interprets, every whereEcho or mirror seeking of itself,And makes a toy of Thought.But O! how oft,How oft, at school, with most believing mindPresageful, have I gazed upon the bars,To watch that fluttering stranger! ... Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Note, in the above example, the use of the part attribute on
the l element, where a verse line is broken between two line
groups, as discussed in section .
Most typically, however, the lg element is used to mark the
highly regular line groups which characterize stanzaic and similar verse
forms, as in the following example from Chaucer:
Sire Thopas was a doghty swayn;White was his face as payndemayn,His lippes rede as rose;His rode is lyk scarlet in grayn,And I yow telle in good certayn,He hadde a semely nose.His heer, his ber was lyk saffroun,That to his girdel raughte adoun;
Like other text-division elements, lg elements may be nested
hierarchically. For example, one particularly common English stanzaic
form consists of a quatrain or sestet followed by a couplet. The
lg element may be used to encode both the stanza and its
components, as in the following example from Byron:
In the first year of Freedom's second dawnDied George the Third; although no tyrant, oneWho shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawnLeft him nor mental nor external sun:A better farmer ne'er brushed dew from lawn,A worse king never left a realm undone!He died — but left his subjects still behind,One half as mad — and t'other no less blind.
Note the use of the type attribute to name the type of
unit encoded by the lg element; this attribute is common to
all members of the att.divLike class (see
section ).For discussion of
other attributes of this class, see .Sestet and couplet might conceivably also be used as the
values of the rhyme attribute in an analysis of rhyme
scheme, for which see below, section . The
type attribute is intended solely for conventional names of
different classes of text block; the met attribute is
intended for systematic metrical analysis.
As a further example, consider the Shakespearean
sonnet. This may be divided into two parts: a concluding couplet, and
a body of twelve lines, itself subdivided into three quatrains:
My Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne,Currall is farre more red, then her lips redIf snow be white, why then her brests are dun:If haires be wiers, black wiers grown on her head:I have seene Roses damaskt, red and white,But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,And in some perfumes is there more delight,Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes.I love to heare her speake, yet well I know,That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:I graunt I never saw a goddesse goe,My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,As any she beli'd with false compare.
Particularly lengthy poetic texts are often subdivided into units
larger than stanzas or paragraphs, which may themselves be
subdivided. Spenser's
Faery Queene, for example,
consists of twelve books each of which contains a
prologue followed by twelve cantos. Each prologue
and each canto consists of nine-line stanzas,
each of which follows the same regular pattern. Other examples in the
same tradition are easy to find.
Large structures of this kind are most conveniently represented by
div or div1 elements, as described in section . Thus the start
of the
Faerie Queene might be encoded as follows:
A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plainY cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
The encoder must choose at which point in the hierarchy of structural
units to introduce lg elements rather than a yet smaller
div element: it would (for example) also be possible to encode
the above example as follows:
A noble knight was pricking on the plainYcladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
One reason for using div rather than lg elements
is that the former may contain non-metrical elements, such as
epigraphs or dedications and other members of the
model.divTop class, whereas lg elements may
contain only headings or metrical lines.
Components of the Verse Line
It is often convenient for various kinds of analysis to encode
subdivisions of verse lines. The general purpose seg element
defined in the tag set for segmentation and alignment (section ) is provided for this purpose:
To use this element together with the module for verse, the
module for segmentation and alignment must also be enabled as further
described in section .
In Old and Middle English alliterative verse, individual verse lines
are typically split into half lines. The seg element may be
used to mark these explicitly, as in the following example from
Langland's
Piers Plowman:
In a somer seson,whan softe was the sonne,I shoop me into shroudesas I a sheep were,In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,Went wide in this world wondres to here.
The seg element can be nested hierarchically, in the same
way as the lg element, down to whatever level of detailed
structure is required. In the following example, the line has been
divided into feet, each of which has been further
subdivided into syllables.As elsewhere in these
Guidelines, this example has been formatted for clarity of exposition
rather than correct display. Note in particular that whether an XML
processor retains whitespace within the seg element or not
(this can be configured by means of the
xml:space attribute) this example will still require
additional processing, since white space should be retained for the lower level seg elements
(those of type syll) but not for the higher level
one (those of type foot).Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris
The seg element may be used to identify any subcomponent of
a line which has content; its type attribute may characterize such units
in any way appropriate to the needs of the encoder. For the specific
case of labeling each foot with its formal type (dactyl,
spondee, etc.), and each syllable with its metrical or prosodic
status (syllables bearing primary or secondary stress, long syllables,
short syllables), however, the specialized attributes met and
real are defined, which provide a more systematic framework
than the type attribute; see section
below.
In classical verse, a hexameter like that above may also be formally
divided into two cola or hemistiches. This example
provides a typical case, in that the boundary of the first
colon falls in the middle of one of the feet (between the syllables
no and Tro). If both kinds of segmentation are required,
the part attribute might be used to mark the overlapping
structure as follows.
Arma virumque cano Troiae qui
Instead of using the part attribute on the seg
element, it might be simpler just to mark the point at which the caesura
occurs. An additional element is provided for analyses of this kind, in
which what is to be marked are points between the words, which
have some significance within a verse line:
In classical prosody, the caesura, which occurs within a
foot, is distinguished from a diaeresis, which occurs on a
foot boundary (not to be confused with the division of a diphthong into
two syllables, or the diacritic symbol used to indicate such division,
each of which is also termed diaeresis). This distinction
is rarely made nowadays, the term caesura being used for
any division irrespective of foot boundaries. No special-purpose diaeresis element is therefore provided.
As an example of the caesura element, we refer again to the
example from Langland. An encoder might choose simply to record the
location of the caesura within each line, rather than encoding each
half-line as a segment in its own right, as follows:
In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne, I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were, In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes, Went wide in this world wondres to here.
Logically, the opposite of caesura might be considered to be
enjambement. When the verse
module is included in a schema, an additional class called att.enjamb is defined as follows:
The following lines demonstrate
the use of the enjamb attribute to mark places where there is
a discrepancy between the boundaries of the l elements and the
syntactic structure of the verse (a discrepancy of some significance in
some schools of verse):
Un astrologue, un jour, se laissa choirAu fond d'un puits.
Rhyme and Metrical Analysis
When the module for verse is in use, the following additional
attributes are available to record information about rhyme and metrical
form:
These attributes may be attached to the lg element, or to the
higher-level text-division elements div, div1, etc.
In general, the attributes should be specified at the highest
level possible; they may not however be specifiable at the highest level
if some of the subdivisions of a text are in prose and others in verse.
All these attributes may also be attached to the l and
seg elements, but the default notation for the rhyme
attribute has no defined meaning when specified on l or
seg. The value for these attributes may take any form desired
by the encoder, but the nature of the notation used will determine how well
the attribute values can be processed by automatic means.
The primary function of the metrical attributes is to encode the
conventional metrical or rhyming structure within which the poet is
working, rather than the actual prosodic realization of each line; the
latter can be recorded using the real attribute, as further
discussed below. A simple mechanism is also provided for recording
the actual realization of a rhyme pattern; see .
Sample Metrical Analyses
As a simple example of the use of these attributes, consider the
following lines from Pope's
Essay on Criticism:
'Tis hard to say, if greater Want of SkillAppear in Writing or in Judging ill;But, of the two, less dang'rous is th'Offence,To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense:
This text is written entirely in heroic
couplets; each line is an iambic pentameter (which, using a common
notation, can be described with the formula
-+|-+|-+|-+|-+/, each - denoting a
metrically unstressed syllable, each + a metrically
stressed one, each | a foot boundary, and the
/ a line-end), and the couplets rhyme (which can be
represented with the conventional formula aa).
Because both rhyme pattern and metrical form are consistent
throughout the poem, they may be conveniently specified on the
div element; the values given for the attributes will be
inherited by any metrical unit contained within the div
elements of this poem, and must be interpreted in the appropriate way.
Since the notation used in the met, real,
and rhyme
attributes is user-defined, no binding description can be given of its
details or of how its interpretation must proceed. (A default notation
is provided for the rhyme attribute, which however the
encoder can replace with another; see section .) It
is expected, however, that software should be able to support these
attributes in useful ways; the more intelligent the software is, and the
more knowledge of metrics is built into it, the better it will be able
to support these attributes. In the extract given above, for example,
the met and rhyme attribute values specified on
the div element are inherited directly by the lg
elements nested within it. Since the met value
specifies the metrical form of a single verse line, the structure of the
lg as a whole is understood to involve as many repetitions of
the pattern as there are lines in the verse paragraph. The same
attribute value, when inherited in turn by the l element, must
be understood not to repeat. With sufficiently
sophisticated software, segments within the line might even be
understood as inheriting precisely that portion of the formula which
applies to the segment in question; this will, however, be easier to
accomplish for some languages than for others.
The rhyme attribute in this example uses the default
notation to specify a rhyme scheme applicable only to pairs of lines.
As elsewhere, the default notation for the rhyme attribute
has no meaning for metrical units at the line level or below. In verse
forms where line-internal rhyme is structurally significant, e.g. in
some skaldic poetry, the default notation is incapable of expressing the
required information, since the rhyme pattern may need to be specified
for units smaller than the line. In such cases, a user-specified rhyme
notation must be substituted for the default notation, or else the rhyme
pattern must be described using some alternative method (e.g. by using
the link mechanism described below).
The precise semantics of the met attribute and the
inferences which software is expected or able to draw from it, are
implementation-dependent; so are the semantics and processing of the
rhyme attribute, when user-specified notations are used.
A formal definition of the significance of each component of the
pattern given as the value of the met attribute may be
provided in the metDecl element within the
encodingDesc element in the TEI header (see section ). The encoder is free to invent any notation
appropriate to his or her analytic needs, provided that it is
adequately documented in this element. The notation may define
metrical components using invented or traditional names (such as
iamb or hexameter) or in terms of basic units such as
codes for stressed or unstressed syllables, or a combination of the
two.
The real (for realization) attribute may optionally
be specified to indicate any deviation from the pattern defined by the
met attribute which the encoder wishes to record. By
default, the real attribute has the same value as the
met attribute on the same element; it is only necessary to
provide an explicit value when the realization differs in some way from
the abstract metrical pattern. The tension between conventional
metrical pattern and its realization may thus be recorded explicitly.
For example, many readers of the above passage would stress the word
But at the beginning of the third line rather than the word
of following it, as the metrical pattern would normally require.
This variation might be encoded as follows:
But, of the two, ...
Where the real attribute is used to over-ride the default
or conventional metrical pattern, it applies only to the element on
which it is specified. The default pattern for any subsequent lines is
unaffected.
As it happens, this particular kind of variation is very common in
the English iambic pentameter — it even has a name:
trochaic substitution — an encoder might therefore
choose to regard this not as an instance of a variant realization, but
as an instance of a variant metrical form:
But, of the two, ...
Alternatively, a different metrical notation might be defined, in which
this kind of variation was permitted throughout the text.
In choosing whether to over-ride a metrical specification in this
way or by using the real attribute, the encoder is required
to determine whether the change is a systematic or conventional one (as
in this example) or an occasional variation, perhaps for local effect.
In the following example, from Goethe's
Auf dem See,
the variation is a matter of local realization:
Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut Saug' ich aus freier Welt; Wie ist Natur so hold und gut, Die mich am Busen hält! Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn Im Rudertakt hinauf, Und Berge, wolkig himmelan, Begegnen unserm Lauf.
On the other hand, the famous inserted alexandrine in Pope's Essay on
Criticism, might be encoded as follows:
A needless alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Here the met attribute indicates that a different metrical
convention (the alexandrine) is in force, while the real
attribute indicates that there is a variation from that
convention. As with many other aspects of metrical analysis, however,
this is of necessity an entirely interpretive judgment.
Segment-Level versus Line-level Tagging
The examples given so far have encoded information about the
realization of metrical conventions at the level of the whole
verse-line. This has obvious advantages of simplicity, but the
disadvantage that any deviation from metrical convention is not
marked at its precise point of occurrence in the text. Greater
precision may be achieved, but only at the cost of marking deviant
metrical units explicitly. This may be done
with the seg element, giving the
variant realization as the value of the real attribute on
that element. Using this method, the example given immediately above
might be encoded as follows:
A needless
alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake,
drags its slow length
along.
The marking of the foot boundaries with the symbol | in the
met attribute value of the l element allows the
human reader, or a sufficiently intelligent software program, to isolate
the correct portion of that attribute value as the default value for the
same attribute on the seg elements for feet, namely -+.
It is of course up to the encoder to decide whether or not to include
the n attribute of seg here, and whether or not also
to tag the feet in the line in which there is no deviation from the
metrical convention. The ability of software to infer which foot is
being marked, if not all are tagged, will depend heavily on the language
of the text and the knowledge of prosody built into the software; the
fuller and more explicit the markup, the easier it will be for software
to handle it. It may prove useful, however, to mark metrical deviations
in the manner shown, even if the available software is not sufficiently
intelligent to scan lines without aid from the markup. Human readers
who are interested in prosody may well be able to exploit the markup in
useful ways even with less sophisticated software.
There are circumstances where it may also be useful to use the
met attribute of seg. If we wish to identify the
exact location of the different types of foot in the first line of
Virgil's
Aeneid, the text could be encoded as follows
(for simplicity's sake the caesura has been omitted):
Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris
An appropriate value of the met attribute might also be
supplied on the enclosing div element, to
indicate that each foot may be made up of a dactyl or a spondee, so that
the values given here for met at the level of the foot may be
considered a series of local variations on this fundamental pattern; in
cases like this, of course, the local variations may also be considered
aspects of realization rather than of convention, in which case the
real attribute may be used instead of met, if
desired.
Metrical Analysis of Stanzaic Verse
The method described above may be used to encode quite complex verse
forms, for instance various kinds of fixed-form stanzas. Let us take
one of Dante's canzoni, in which each stanza except the last has the
same combination of eleven-syllable and seven-syllable lines, and the
same rhyme scheme:
Doglia mi reca nello core ardire
Here the met attribute specifies a metrical pattern for
each of the twenty-one lines making up a stanza of the
canzone. Each stanza inherits this definition from the
parent div element. The rhyme attribute specifies
a rhyme scheme for each stanza, in the same way.
In the metrical notation used here, the letter E
represents a line containing nine syllables which may or may not be
metrically prominent, a tenth which is prominent and an optional
non-prominent eleventh syllable. The letter S is used to
represent a line containing five syllables which may or may not be
metrically prominent, a sixth which is prominent and an optional
non-prominent seventh syllable. A suitable definition for this
notation might be given by a metDecl element like the
following:
xxxxxxxxx+oxxxxx+ometrically prominent or non-prominentmetrically prominentoptional non prominentline division
As noted above, the metrical pattern specified on the div
applies to each lg (stanza) element contained within the
div. In fact however, after seven stanzas of this type, there
is a final stanza, known as a commiato or envoi, which
follows a different metrical and rhyming scheme. The solution to this
problem is simply to specify a new met attribute on the
eighth stanza itself, which will override the default value inherited
from parent div, as follows:
... Canzone, presso di qui è une donna
Note that, in the same way as for the real attribute,
over-riding of this kind does not affect subsequent elements at the same
hierarchic level. Any lg element following the
commiato above would be assumed to use the same metrical
and rhyming scheme as the one preceding the commiato.
Moreover, although it is quite regular (in the sense that the last
stanza of each canzone is a commiato), the
over-riding must be specified for each case.
Rhyme
The rhyme attribute is used to specify the rhyme pattern
of a verse form. It should not be confused with the rhyme
element, which is used to mark the actual rhyming word or words:
Like the met attribute, the rhyme attribute can be used with
a user-specified notation documented by the metDecl element
in the TEI header. Unlike met, however, the rhyme
attribute has a default notation; if this default notation is used, no
metDecl element need be given.
The default notation for rhyme offers the ability to record
patterns of rhyming lines, using the traditional notation in which
distinct letters stand for rhyming lines. For a work in rhyming
couplets, like the Pope example above, the rhyme attribute
simply specifies aa, indicating that pairs of adjacent
lines rhyme with each other. For a slightly more complex scheme,
applicable to groups of four lines, in which lines 1 and 3 rhyme, as
do lines 2 and 4, this attribute would have the value
abab. The traditional Spenserian stanza has the pattern
ababbcbcc, indicating that within each nine line stanza,
lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other, as do lines 2, 4, 5 and 7, and
lines 6, 8 and 9.
Non-rhyming lines within such a group may be represented using a
hyphen or an x, as in the following example:
The rhyme element may be used to mark the
words (or parts of words) which rhyme according to a predefined pattern:
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growlTwo riders were approaching and the wind began to howl
The label attribute is used to specify which parts of a
rhyme scheme a given set of rhyming words represent:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,And mark in every face I meetMarks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every ManIn every Infant's cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
Within a given scope, all rhyme elements with the same value for
their label attribute are assumed to rhyme
with each other: thus, in the above example, the two rhymes
labelled a in the first stanza rhyme with each
other, but not necessarily with those labelled a
in the second stanza. The scope is defined by the nearest ancestor
element for which the rhyme attribute has been supplied.
The rhyme element can appear anywhere within a verse line,
and not necessarily around a single word. It
can thus be used to mark quite complex internal rhyming schemes, as in the
following example:
The sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of goldWhen all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.
This mechanism, although reasonably simple for simple cases,
may not be appropriate for more complex applications. In general, rhyme may be considered
as a special form of correspondence, and hence
encoded using the mechanisms defined for that purpose in section . Similar considerations apply to other metrical
features such as alliteration or assonance.
To use the correspondence mechanisms to represent the complex rhyming
pattern of the above example, each rhyme element must be
given a unique identifier, as follows:
The sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of goldWhen all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.
Now that each rhyming word, or part-word, has been tagged and allocated
an arbitrary identifier, the general purpose link element may
be used to indicate which of the rhyme elements share the same
rhyme, as follows:
For further discussion of the link and linkGrp
element, see section .
The rhyme and caesura phrase level elements are
made available by the model.lPart class when the module
defined by this chapter is included in a schema.
Metrical Notation Declaration
When the module defined in this chapter is included in a schema,
a specialised element is optionally available in the
encodingDesc element of the TEI Header to document the
metrical notation used in marking up a text.
As with other components of the header, metrical notation may be
specified either formally or informally. In a formal specification,
every symbol used in the metrical notation must be documented by a
corresponding metSym element; in an informal one, only a brief
prose description of the way in which the notation is used need be
given. In either case, the optional pattern attribute may be
used to supply a regular expression which a processor can use to
validate expressions in the intended notation. The following
constraints apply:
if pattern is supplied, any notation used
which does not conform to it should be regarded as
invalidif any metSym is defined, then any notation
using undefined symbols should be regarded as
invalidif both pattern and symbol are defined, then every
symbol appearing explicitly within pattern must be
definedsymbols which are not matched by pattern may
be defined within a metDecl
element
As a simple example, consider the case of the notation in which
metrical prominence, metrical feet, and line boundaries are all to be encoded.
Legal specifications in this notation may be written for any sequence of
metrically prominent or non-prominent features, optionally separated by
foot or metrical line boundaries at arbitrary points. Assuming that the
symbol 1 is used for metrical prominence,
0 for non-prominence, | for foot boundary
and / for line boundary, then the following declaration
achieves this object:
metrical prominencemetrical non-prominencefoot boundarymetrical line boundary
The same notation might also be specified less formally, as follows:
Metrically prominent syllables are marked '1' and other
syllables '0'. Foot divisions are marked by a vertical bar,
and line divisions with a solidus.
This notation may be applied to any metrical unit, of any
size (including, for example, individual feet as well as
groups of lines).
Note that in this case, because the pattern attribute has not
been supplied, no processor can validate met attribute values
within the text which use this metrical notation.
For more complex cases, it will often be more convenient to define
a notation incrementally. The terminal attribute should
be used to indicate for a given symbol whether or not it may be
re-defined in terms of other symbols used within the same notation.
For example, here is a notation for encoding classical metres, in
which symbols are provided for the most common types of foot. These symbols are themselves documented
within the same notation, in terms of more primitive long and short
syllables:
-oo-oo---ooooo-short syllablelong syllable
Note here the use of the global n attribute to supply an
additional name for the symbols being documented.
&metDecl;
&metSym;
Encoding Procedures for Other Verse Features
A number of procedures that may be of particular concern to encoders
of verse texts are dealt with elsewhere in these guidelines. Some
aspects of layout and physical appearance, especially important in the
case of free verse, are dealt with in chapter . Some
initial recommendations for the encoding of phonetic or prosodic
transcripts, which may be helpful in the analysis of sound structures in
poetry, are to be found in chapter ; it may also be
found convenient to use standard entity names (those proposed for the
International Phonetic Alphabet suggest themselves) to mark positions of
suprasegmentals such as primary and secondary stress, or other aspects
of accentual structure.
As already indicated, chapter contains much
which will be found useful for the aligning of multiple levels of
commentary and structure within verse analysis. Encoders of verse (as
of other types of literary text) will frequently wish to attach
identifying labels to portions of text that are not part of a system
of hierarchical divisions, may overlap with one another, and/or may be
discontinuous; for instance passages associated with particular
characters, themes, images, allusions, topoi, styles, or modes of
narration. Much of the computerized analysis of verse seems likely to
require dividing texts up into blocks in this way. The span
element discussed in provides the means for
doing this. Finally, the procedures for the tagging of feature
structures, described in chapter , provide a
powerful means of encoding a wide variety of aspects of verse
literature, including not only the metrical structures discussed
above, but also such stylistic and rhetorical features as metaphor.
For other features it must for the time being be left to encoders to
devise their own terminology. Elements such as metaphor tenor="..."
vehicle="..." ... /metaphor might well suggest
themselves; but given the problems of definition involved, and the great
richness of modern metaphor theory, it is clear that any such format, if
predefined by these Guidelines, would have seemed objectionable to some
and excessively restrictive to many. Leaving the choice of tagging
terminology to individual encoders carries with it one vital corollary,
however: the encoder must be utterly explicit, in the TEI header, about
the methods of tagging used and the criteria and definitions on which
they rest. Where no formal elements are currently proposed, such
information may readily be given as simple prose description within the
encodingDesc element defined in section .
Module for Verse
The module described in this chapter makes available the following
components:
VerseVerse structuresPoésie韻文結構Strutture poeticheEstrutura dos versos韻文モジュール
The selection and combination of modules to form a TEI schema is described in
.