Well-Weighed Syllables
Elizabethan Verse in Classical Metres

This book examines Sidney's statement that quantitative verse on the Latin model is more suitable than the accentual verse of the English tradition during the Renaissance.

Derek Attridge (Author)

9780521297226, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 December 1979

268 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

Sidney's statement in his Apology for Poetry that quantitative verse on the Latin model is more suitable than the accentual verse of the English tradition 'lively to express divers passions, by the low and lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable' is only one of numerous assertions of the superiority of classical over native metres made by English scholars and poets during the Renaissance, stretching from Roger Ascham some twenty years earlier to Ben Jonson some fifty years later.

Part I. The Elizabethan understanding of Latin metre: 1. Problems of Latin prosody
2. The Elizabethan pronunciation of Latin
3. The Elizabethan reading of Latin verse
4. Latin prosody in the Elizabethan grammar school
5. Vowel-length, quantity and accent
6. Continental discussions of Latin quantity
Part II. English Verse and classical metre: 7. Attitudes towards accentual verse
8. The quantitative movement - causes
9. The quantitative movement - magnitude
10. The quantitative movement - characteristics
Part III. Quantative poets and theorists: 11. Uncompromising imitation - Richard Stanyhurst
12. Scholarship and sensitivity - Sir Philip Sidney
13. 'Our new famous enterprise' - Spenser, Harvey and Fraunce
14. Four approaches to quantitative verse
15. Theory and compromise - Puttenham and Campion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]