| The prosody of the stanzaic poems called madrāšê, written in Syriac by Ephrem of Nisibis in the fourth century, has long been studied by scholars. Until now, these studies have focused on meter, but this has left many questions unanswered. The present study examines the interclausal syntax of individual stanzas of madrāšê V and VI of the cycle on Paradise. Many patterns have been found that are employed, with many variations, throughout the two madrāšê in a wide variety of combinations, showing the great creativity of Ephrem as a poet.;These patterns are called syntactic devices in this dissertation. They include both previously named devices such as enjambment and chiasmus, and patterns that have not been previously reported in the study of Semitic poetry, for which names have been coined, such as dissimilar parallel blocks, multiple parallels with variation, and staccato hemistichs. Such patterns serve as templates for lines, sections of stanzas, and sometimes whole stanzas. Most templates only apply to the section level or smaller groups of lines, but they are combined in numerous ways by Ephrem to construct whole stanzas.;This study lays the groundwork for future work on the stanza-level syntax of Ephrem. This work can be expected to yield many new insights into the way Ephrem's prosody works at the deepest level. |
