Learning the Secrets of English Verse

Learning the Secrets of English Verse
Author: David J. Rothman
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030530965

This textbook teaches the writing of poetry by examining all the major verse forms and repeating stanza forms in English. It provides students with the tools to compose successful lines of poetry and focuses on meter (including free verse), rhythm, rhyme, and the many other tools a poet needs to create both music and meaningfulness in an artful poem. Presenting copious examples from strong poets of the past and present along with many recent student examples, all of which are scanned, each chapter offers lessons in poetic history and the practice of writing verse, along with giving students a structured opportunity to experiment writing in all the forms discussed. In Part 1, Rothman and Spear begin at the beginning, with Anglo-Saxon Strong Stress Alliterative Meter and examine every major meter in English, up to and including the free verse forms of modern and contemporary poetry. Part 2 presents a close examination of stanza forms that moves from the simple to the complex, beginning with couplets and ending with the 14-line Eugene Onegin stanza. The goal of the book is to give students the essential skills to understand how any line of poetry in English may have been composed, the better to enjoy them and then also write their own: the keys to the treasure chest. Rothman and Spear present a rigorous curriculum that teaches the craft of poetry through a systematic examination and practice of the major English meters and verse forms. Under their guidance, students hone their craft while studying the rich traditions and innovations of poets writing in English. Suitable for high school students and beyond. I studied with Rothman in graduate school and went through this course with additional scholarly material. This book will help students develop a keen ear for the music of the English language.—Teow Lim Goh, author of Islanders

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 1, 600-1660

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 1, 600-1660
Author: George Watson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1322
Release: 1974-08-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521200042

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 1 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

Reconstructing Alliterative Verse

Reconstructing Alliterative Verse
Author: Ian Cornelius
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107154103

This book explores the history and development of English alliterative meter, and considers why the form has remained so enigmatic.