Chapters On Alliterative Verse

Excerpt from Chapters on Alliterative Verse The dissertation herewith submitted for approval varies very much from my original design, which was to have written a critical review of recent German treatises on the subject of alliterative verse. In January last, whilst engaged upon this task, my attention was drawn to certain unusual metrical points which I had noted in Cod. Junius XI in the summer of 1889 thinking them at the time simple errors on the part of the scribe, but which I now saw to be an invaluable clue to the construction of the half-verse. Following this out, by the aid of Prof. Moller's work on alliterative poetry (Zur ahd. Alliterationspoesie) I was soon led to the conclusion, stated in Chap. I. p. 30, that the half-verse is constructed on the same plan as the whole verse, that as the latter is divided into two sections by a caesura, each of which may begin either with an accented, or an unaccented syllable, so is the former. Unfortunately, my notes were confined to the Exodus and Daniel poems, and it was impossible for me, as I was then stationed at Prague, to consult the MS. further. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"The chapters of this book form an essay in a type of history I call 'verse history, ' a concept not covered by any of the usual terms applied to the study of literature. Verse history is the history of a tradition of composing poems in a certain meter. It is distinct from literary history, because two works from one genre, place, or time, even two works by one poet, may be in different meters. The inverse is also true, in that verse history can connect poems from very different local contexts. The relationship between Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" and a twenty-first-century sonnet on supercomputers is more general than literary influence, a genre, or a school"--

A revisionary account of the 900-year-long history of a major poetic tradition, explored through metrics and literary history.