Prosody and Meter: Early Modern to 19th Century

Both of the terms prosody and meter have shifting and contested definitions in the history of English literature. Historically, prosody was a grammatical term adopted from early translations of Greek and then Latin grammatical models, forming part of an overarching structure: orthometry, etymology, syntax, prosody. In this structure, meter was not always named, but versification covered “the measure of language” and was a subsection of prosody, after “pronunciation, utterance, figures, versification” (or some variation on these) in most 19th-century grammar books. Therefore, prosody contains within it changing approaches to the study of pronunciation and versification. In the 20th century, prosody has become synonymous in linguistics with pronunciation, and in literary study with versification. Scholars of the history of versification are legion. The versification manual or poetic forms handbook is a genre unto itself. The beginning of these books usually accounts for inadequate predecessors; consequently, many manuals are also bibliographies. Historical discourse about versification is not limited to the manual or handbook, however, and is found in studies of poetry, school textbooks, grammar books, introductions to collected works by individual poets, addendums to dictionaries, articles and reviews of poetry in periodicals and newspapers, pronunciation guides, histories of language, and studies of translation. Because the history of the study of pronunciation in English and Irish studies is so vast, this bibliography will only consider a few key texts that consider pronunciation and versification together as prosody. The development of historical linguistics in the 19th century is concurrent with the largest proliferation of studies of prosody-as-versification, and therefore is an important context for the narrative of prosody’s dual fate in the 20th century, hovering between literary study and the science of linguistics. To provide a history of even the ways that these terms themselves have shifted is outside the scope of this bibliography. As T. V. F. Brogan rightly claimed in 1981, “In studies of the structure of verse the use of terms such as poetry, verse, accent, quantity, Numbers, Measure, rhythm, meter, prosody, versification, onomatopoeia, and rhyme/rime/ryme historically and consistently has been nothing short of Pandemonium.” (Brogan 1981, p. ix, cited under Histories of Prosodic Criticism) Indeed, any modern attempt to define prosody must wrestle with the terminological confusion that Brogan narrates. Following Brogan, this bibliography will highlight the confusion without attempting to correct it. Here, I consider both prosody and versification in their widest sense to mean “verse-theory” and not solely “linguistic prosody,” and will discuss texts that have been considered “canonical” as well as texts that consider prosody in all of its historical and cultural valences.