This study submits to empirical investigation an old idea of Tsur’s regarding the effect of enjambment on the perceived subtleness of irony in a poetic passage. We submitted two versions of a Milton passage to over 50 participants with “background in literary studies”, ranging from undergraduates to tenured professors, asking them to rate the perceived subtleness of irony and forthrightness of expression. We received four incompatible combinations of relative subtleness and forthrightness in the two passages. Two of the combinations were logically reasonable (though resulting from opposite performances), and two were internally inconsistent. An analysis of these results revealed two sources of this discrepancy: enjambments can be performed in three different ways, and participants respond not to abstract enjambments, but to performed enjambments; and they act upon partly overlapping definitions of irony. Assuming different performances of the enjambment, both logically acceptable response patterns support our hypothesis. Yet, a large part of the responses in this study were incoherent to some extent. This highlights the difficulty in collecting subjective interpretations of complex aesthetic events. We discuss this methodological issue at length.

中文翻译：

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Enjambment——讽刺、机智、情感。建议更广泛原则的案例研究

这项研究向实证研究提出了 Tsur 的一个旧观念，即在诗歌段落中，封印对感知到的讽刺微妙性的影响。我们向 50 多名具有“文学研究背景”的参与者（从本科生到终身教授）提交了弥尔顿文章的两个版本，要求他们对感知到的讽刺的微妙性和表达的直率进行评分。在这两段经文中，我们收到了四种相对微妙和直率的不相容组合。其中两个组合在逻辑上是合理的（尽管是由相反的表现造成的），两个在内部是不一致的。对这些结果的分析揭示了这种差异的两个来源：enjambments 可以以三种不同的方式进行，参与者不是对抽象 enjambments 做出反应，而是对执行 enjambments 作出反应；他们根据部分重叠的讽刺定义采取行动。假设包围的不同表现，两种逻辑上可接受的响应模式都支持我们的假设。然而，这项研究中的很大一部分反应在某种程度上是不连贯的。这凸显了收集复杂审美事件的主观解释的困难。我们详细讨论了这个方法论问题。