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Prose-Rhythm and the Comparative Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. H. Shewring
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Extract

In writing on a subject in which the most significant words have been used in quite different senses by modern authors, I think it most prudent to begin by defining my terms. By rhythmical prose I mean all prose in which the writer consciously follows a definite scheme in order to obtain particular cadences at the close of the period or within it, and this whether the favoured cadences are marked by quantity or by accent. I subdivide rhythmical prose into metrical and accentual. The latter term explains itself. In spite of Aristotle's familiar opposition of ṕÅθμóσ and μτρ¿ν, I use the word ‘metrical’ of quantitative prose, both because the term ‘quantitative prose’ seems to me cumbrous, and because to the speakers of any modern language metre is the natural opposite of stress accent, whether in prose or in verse; and Aristotle's terminology, which takes no account of stress accent, may reasonably be displaced by the modern distinction. (For the beginnings of this later usage in post-classical theoreticians cf.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 3-4 , July 1930 , pp. 164 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1930

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References

page 165 note 1 According to de Groot the absolute frequency of these forms in Cicero is 4·7 per cent, and 16·2 per cent, respectively. Although these percentages are based on a smaller number of cases than Zielinski's, they may be taken as more reliable. On the defects of the latter's statistics (apart from the application of them) cf. Laurand, , Éitudes sur Cicéron 3, pp. 199 and 200Google Scholar.

page 166 note 1 Manuel des Études grecques et latines4, III. 591–2, VI. 611–28; Éludes sur le Style des Discours de Cicéron 3; Ce qu'on sail et ce qu'on ignore du cursus; Pages de I'histoire du cursus.

page 167 note 1 Prokopios von Cäsarea; A Handbook of Antique Prose-Rhythm; Der antike Prosarhythmus; La Prose métrique des Anciens.

page 167 note 2 Novotný, , Eine neue Methode der Klausel forschung, Berl. Philol. Wochenschr., 1917, cols. 217–22Google Scholar; Broadhead, Latin Prose Rhythm.

page 167 note 3 Like Bornecque, both Novotný and Broadhead confuse matters by making the word the metrical unit. Broadhead has a further theory of the importance of accent in the metrical clausula, which is at least unproved for Latin and is obviously impossible for Greek.

page 171 note 1 As an example of an obviously intentional spondaic ending in Greek prose, I may quote Lucian, , V. H. II. 291Google Scholar, ¿ἰμωγƲ ƲθρώπωƲ π¿λλƲ.

page 172 note 1 Not apparently in Plato or in Cicero.

page 172 note 2 It remains a possibility that evidence of an intermediate stage will appear later.

page 172 note 3 The ‘dispondaic’ cursus is so called from the fact that its normal form ‘esse constitutus’ consists of two words, each accented on the penultimate syllable—‘spondees’ in mediaeval terminology. The term seems to me unsatisfactory, but some name is required, and no better one has been suggested.

page 173 note 1 On these last two points, which I have not discussed, see Groot's, deHandbook, pp. 36 and 62Google Scholar.