Chaucer's Prosody and the Non-Pentameter Line in John Heywood's Comic Debates

Author / Editor
Fox, Allan B.

Title
Chaucer's Prosody and the Non-Pentameter Line in John Heywood's Comic Debates

Published
Language and Style 10 (1977): 27-41.

Description
Although Heywood's comic debates are dismissed as negligible in metrical skill, once we realize that Chaucer's line is a non-pentameter, more dependent on alliterative accentual native verse than most metrists allow, then we can see that the debates reveal a formal control in a verse tradition stemming from Chaucer.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.
Style and Versification.