A New History of English Metre.

Author / Editor
Duffell, Martin J.

Title
A New History of English Metre.

Published
London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2008.

Physical Description
xii, 292 pp.

Series
Studies in Linguistics, no. 5.

Description
Uses comparative and linguistic metrics and statistical analysis to describe the history of English meter from early Germanic verse to modern metrical experiments. Chapter 4, "Versifying in Bilingual England" (pp. 73-95), focuses on the metrical practices and innovations of Gower and Chaucer, concentrating on Chaucer's early "short-line" verse as a "four-ictic dolnik with a transitionally iambic rhythm" and explaining his "great innovation"--the "first true iambic pentameter in any European language," made flexible, effective, and non-monotonous by Chaucer's techniques of evasion, inversion, void, and caesural variation. Identifies Chaucer's metrical influences and provides examples throughout. Includes comments on the French dialect and metrics of the so-called "Poems of Ch."

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