Meter and Rhythm of Pre-Chaucerian Rhymed Verse

Author / Editor
Tarlinskaja, M. G.

Title
Meter and Rhythm of Pre-Chaucerian Rhymed Verse

Published
Linguistics 121 (1974): 65-87.
Voprosy Jazykoznanija 3 (1971): 73-88.

Description
English version of an essay originally published in Russian in "Voprosy Jazykoznanija" 3 (1971): 73-88. Tabulates and assesses metrical features of several Middle English poems, including several by Chaucer, exploring the development of English prosody from Old English verse to Coleridge and Shelley. Chaucer's early verse differs from preceding ME poetry in its "uniform number of ictuses per line" and its "almost complete identity of syllabic intervals between ictuses"; it is characteristically "syllabo-tonic."

Chaucer Subjects
Style and Versification