Prosodic Memory: Claudel − Eliot – Liebert

In this paper prosodic memory is considered to be a collection of all past experiences of speech, sound and rhythm that are activated during the reception of a linguistic text. Although the resources of prosodic memory are accumulated in every person individually, its organisation is influenced by culture, which provides us with repetitive patterns when hearing and seeing words. Prosodic memory is one of the factors that determines the choice of the form of a poem, and transforms the sequence of verses into a melody. From a neuropsychological point of view, it is a priming effect. From a cultural point of view, the connection between a given poem and prosodic memory is created, among others, by the poem’s genre. In the article this phenomenon is discussed using the genre of litany as an example, and subsequently examined in three texts that were published in the interwar period: Claudel’s “Les Litanies de Bernadette,” Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday” and Liebert’s “Litania do Marii Panny.”