Prosody Across Traditions (English & Beyond)

Table of Contents P rosody is not a single system invented by English poets and then exported to the rest of the world. It is a family of related practices that have developed differently according to the phonetic character of each language and the cultural history of its verse. English prosody is only one member of that family. Understanding its place among other traditions sharpens our sense of what is distinctive about English and what is shared across languages. This lecture offers a comparative overview. We will first characterize the dominant system of English verse, then place it beside several major alternative systems: the quantitative meters of classical Greek and Latin, the syllable-counting traditions of French and other Romance languages, the quantitative-qualitative systems of Arabic and Persian, and the tonal and syllabic practices of classical Chinese. The aim is not exhaustive coverage of every tradition but a clear sense of the range of possibilities and of the particul…