Chapters on English Metre

First published in 1901, as the second edition of an 1886 original, this book provides a detailed analysis of English metrical systems.

Joseph B. Mayor (Author)

9781107445819, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 December 2014

326 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

First published in 1901, as the second edition of an 1886 original, this book provides a detailed analysis of English metrical systems. The text presents an attempt 'to ascertain by a process of induction the more general laws of modern metre, and to test the results on a variety of instances'. Notes are incorporated throughout and appendices are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in English poetry and the nature of metre.

1. Introduction
2. Antiquarian a-priorism
3. Logical a-priorism
4. Aesthetic intuitivism
5. Natural or a-posteriori system
6. Metrical metamorphosis
7. Two recent metrical systems
8. Naming and classification of metres. Illustrations from Tenyson
9. Naming and classification of metres. Illustrations from the hymn-book
10. Blank verse of Surrey and Marlowe
11. Shakespeare's blank verse. Macbeth
12. Shakespeare's blank verse. Hamlet
13. Modern blank verse. Tennyson and Browning
14. Shelley's metre
15. The English hexameter
Appendix A. Mr H. Nicol and Prof. Paul Meyer on the Old French decasyllabic metre. Abstract of Zarncke's essay on the 5-foot iambus of Lessing and Schiller
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]