Whose rhyme is whose reason? Sound and sense in Cyrano de Bergerac

Abstract

This article proposes a new interpretation of the relationship between poetic form and literary interpretation in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, focusing on the special affordances of rhyme and meter in dramatic verse and on Rostand's virtuosic exploitation of poetic blending possibilities in Cyrano. I claim that poetic blends play a thematically essential role in this work, at a level far beyond their thematic contribution to most verse drama. Such a reading of Cyranomay thus help to expose general aspects of poetic blending which may be less visibly present in other texts. It also has consequences for our understanding of verbal humor and irony. In the final section of the article, I propose an extension of my analysis of metric and rhyming blends to the beginnings of a cognitive poetic treatment of intertextuality as blending.