>
> Gary Lipon [to RSGwynn quoting William Monroe's Zembla essay on "Pale
> Fire": "Nabokov himself calls attention to the humorous potential of rhyme in
> his Notes on Prosody, part of his scholarly apparatus originally attached to
> Eugene Onegin. His depreciation of "fancy rhymes" in English poetry is
> invaluable for an analysis of Shade's poem."] "I wholly agree with the
> [general] argument that a humorous effect occurs when more than one syllable
> rhymes...Focusing on these jingly effects, it's understandable one might
> recoil....and whether such an ironic piece is capable of expressing and evoking
> ..This is the question: does Shade know he's being ironic in using these
> rhymes and trite banalities? With regards to the multi-syllabic rhyming, on
> purely logical grounds, it would seem impossible for Shade not to be
> aware...It's possible that Shade only knows an ironic mode...I think the value of a
> poem to be most reliably adduced by a close inspection of the poem itself.
> Inference from other sources may be useful, but not as satisfying as direct
> textual analysis..."
>