Dag Norberg's analysis and interpretation of Medieval Latin versification, which was published in French in 1958 and remains the standard work on the subject, appears here for the first time in English with a detailed, scholarly introduction by Jan Ziolkowski that reviews the developments of the past fifty years.

No detailed description available for "A Study of Rhythmic Structure in the Verse of William Butler Yeats".

"In this unparalleled study of the forms of Hebrew poetry, preeminent authority Benjamin Harshav examines Hebrew verse during three millennia of changing historical and cultural contexts. He takes us around the world of the Jewish diaspora, comparing the changes in Hebrew verse as it came into contact with the Canaanite, Greek, Arabic, Italian, German, Russian, Yiddish, and English poetic forms. Harshav explores the types and constraints of free rhythms, the meanings of sound patterns, the historical and linguistic frameworks that produced the first accentual iambs in English, German, Russian, and Hebrew, and the first discovery of these iambs in a Yiddish romance written in Venice in 1508/09. In each chapter, the author presents an innovative analytical theory on a particular poetic domain, drawing on his close study of thousands of Hebrew poems"--

Versification describes the marriage of language and poetic form through which poetry is produced. Formal principles, such as metre, alliteration, rhyme, or parallelism, take precedence over syntax and prosody, resulting in expressions becoming organised as verse rather than prose. The aesthetic appeal of poetry is often linked to the potential for this process to seem mysterious or almost magical, not to mention the interplay of particular expressions with forms and expectations. The dynamics of versification thus draw a general interest for everyone, from enthusiasts of poetry or forms of verbal art to researchers of folklore, ethnomusicology, linguistics, literature, philology, and more. The authors of the works in the present volume explore versification from a variety of angles and in diverse cultural milieus. The focus is on metrics in practice, meaning that the authors concentrate not so much on the analysis of the metrical systems per se as on the ways that metres are used and varied in performance by individual poets and in relationship to language.

Versatility in Versification grew out of an international conference organized by the University of Iceland and the Nordic Society for Metrical Studies and held at Reykholt, Iceland, the thirteenth-century home of Snorri Sturluson. Although medieval Icelandic poetic culture was highlighted at the conference, the range of subjects remained diverse and discussion became dynamic. Similarly, this volume brings together the work of a broad range of scholars who embark on a discourse across disciplines, addressing aspects of poetry and poetics within the Germanic language family in particular. The subjects range from runic metrical inscriptions to literature and poetics of the modern day, the medieval period becoming a nexus of attention through which the various subjects in this historical scope are interwoven and united. Approaches range from theoretical linguistics and generative metrics to cognitive theory and folkloristics. The discourse initiated at the conference has both continued and expanded during this volume's evolution, and it has significantly enriched the development of the individual chapters, which variously treat meters, their relationships to language, and poetics in application. These diverse subjects and approaches form remarkable constellations of complementary relationships and continue to engage in a discourse to the immense benefit of the reader.