Well-Weighed Syllables

Download or read book Well-Weighed Syllables written by Derek Attridge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1975-03-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sidney's statement in his Apology for Poetry that quantitative verse on the Latin model is more suitable than the accentual verse of the English tradition 'lively to express divers passions, by the low and lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable' is only one of numerous assertions of the superiority of classical over native metres made by English scholars and poets during the Renaissance, stretching from Roger Ascham some twenty years earlier to Ben Jonson some fifty years later.