Accentual Verse

[milo]

Yes and the people who denigrated accentual verse are/were the same type who said Mark Twain was not a very good writer because he was a humorist!

"Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English (read, more natural), as opposed to syllabic verse which is common in syllable-timed languages, such as French."

The truth is that accentual verse is a perfectly valid form, and if the Norman's hadn't invaded in1066, making Old French the de facto high language and making everyone think they needed to mimic the court language (metered verse) so they would not appear like rubes, then accentual verse would still be the dominate form. This is also why trying to write iambic pentameter so often ends up sounding like Yoda speech.

Dale

I know you're old but I think it might be time to move out of the eleventh century.