Poetry, sound, and the matter of prosody, 1800-2000 / Peter Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Peter, 1987- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--19th century--History and criticism.

English poetry.

English poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

American poetry--History and criticism.

American poetry.

English language--Versification--History--19th century.

English language.

English language--Versification--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"When modernist poets rejected meter at the beginning of the twentieth century, they seemed to reject something at the heart of poetry: sound. Yet meter was only one of the many sound media that poets on either side of 1900 used to structure their poems. As new technologies like the phonograph unsettled print modes of representing sound, language, and voice, poets likewise pluralized the sonic basis, or “prosody,” of their work. Enlisting talking birds and printed ballads, illuminated manuscripts and books shaped like vinyl LPs, poets in Britain and America mixed new media with old to revitalize the lyric tradition and explore the cultural stakes of sound reproduction. Examining key moments of prosodic innovation from Romanticism to hip hop, Poetry, Sound, and the Matter of Prosody, 1800–2000 reads the fall of meter against the rise of modern sound recording to reframe prosodic analysis as a form of media theory. By considering the broad range of elements affecting the sounds and rhythms of poetic language, some tangible (e.g. paper, ink, vinyl), others intangible (e.g. meter, genre, musical form), the book provides a richer sense of the prosodic repertoire of individual poems while enabling unexpected connections between poems from different historical periods. Anchored around five canonical figures, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes, while attending to their work’s ongoing transformation by contemporary popular culture, the book offers both formal and historical insights into the nature of lyric poetry after Romanticism"-- Oxford Academic.

Examines prosodic innovation, reframing prosodic analysis as a form of media theory. Peter Miller considers a broad range of elements affecting the sounds and rhythms of poetic language to illuminate the prosodic repertoire of individual poems and draw connections between poems from different historical periods.

Contents:

Introduction : the matter of prosody, 1800-2000

Lyrics/ballads

Ravens, books, and bells

Syllable from sound

Modernist grooves

Paper records

Epilogue : a transmedial poetics.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed December 9, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Miller, Peter, 1987- Poetry, sound, and the matter of prosody, 1800-2000

ISBN:

9780198937210

0198937210

9780198937203

0198937202

9780198937197

0198937199

OCLC:

1484321729

Publisher Number:

CIPO000184112

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license