Biographical note: Sascha Bru, Genth University, Belgium; Peter Nicholls, University of Sussex, UK.

Modernism is often characterised by its appeal to painting rather than to music as a model of literary form. This essay explores what is taken to be a continuing dependence on metre and rhythm as types of signification. From Swinburne and Mallarmé through to Pound and Eliot, it is argued, poets looked to “musical” effects of verse as rich sources of memory and association.

We think that Kripke’s arguments that there are contingent a priori truths and that there are necessary a posteriori truths about named and essentially described entities fail. They fail for the reasons that there are ambiguities in each of the three eases. In the first ease, what is known apriori is not what is contingent. In the latter two cases, what is necessary or essential is not what is known a posteriori.

We think that Kripke’s arguments that there are contingent a priori truths and that there are necessary a posteriori truths about named and essentially described entities fail. They fail for the reasons that there are ambiguities in each of the three eases. In the first ease, what is known apriori is not what is contingent. In the latter two cases, what is necessary or essential is not what is known a posteriori.