Beginning from the End: Strategies of Composition in Lyrical Improvisation with End Rhyme

Abstract

The target of this paper is to analyze the structural and rhetorical principles that seem to be emblematic of extempore composition in all three of these rhymed forms of oral poetry.1 The analysis focuses on the methods that improvisers employ in the construction of end rhyme patterns and in structuring the semantic hierarchy of verse units in the spontaneous composition of verses in these traditions.