Augustan Measures Restoration And 18Th Century Writings On Prosody And Metre

A comprehensive survey of Restoration and 18th-century writings on metre and poetic form. The study focuses mainly on the debates caused by the perceived differences between the couplet and blank verse, and provides a survey of the techniques and findings of our 17th- and 18th-century precursors. The volume discusses 16th- and early 17th-century writings on metre as the background to the 18th-century debates; the conflicting and often confusing theories forwarded by later 17th- and 18th-century critics; the contributions of the Prescriptive and Elocutionist critics; and rhyme and blank verse. At the end Bradford concentrates upon how and why the blank verse of Milton and his 18th-century successors raised particular questions for contemporary critics.