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This paper sheds new light on two Greek texts accompanying Aeschylus’ Prometheus Vinctus, in the fifteenth-century manuscript Q No. 2 of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. The first text is a didactic poem on iambic versification, allegedly composed by Michael Psellos, and the other one is a mixture of book epigrams related to the subject of the Prometheus Vinctus. August Nauck studied the manuscript and published these texts. All further mentions of the manuscript depend on Nauck’s readings, which nobody seems to question. In the latest edition of Psellos, prepared by Westerink, the manuscript from St Petersburg has not been taken into account, albeit the editor mentions Nauck’s publication. As for the epigrams, they have been published several times, also without taking that manuscript into account. A new study of the codex shows that Nauck’s edition contains several minor misreadings, therefore, I propose a new edition, based on the St Petersburg manuscript, as well as other manuscripts bearing same or similar verses, which were, apparently, unknown to him. Analyzing the epigrams on Prometheus, I compare our manuscript with others which contain the same verses (usually in different order). I try to explain some of the mistakes in these texts and correct them, as well as to compare them with other readings.

Nel quadro della macro-categoria dell’ibridazione dei generi letterari si dimostra come la caratterizzazione ‘comica’ del personaggio di Ercole passi, nel genere tragico, anche attraverso l’ethos delle soluzioni spondaiche della versificazione giambica, con particolare attenzione al settimo elemento del trimetro giambico. Within the framework of the macro-category of hybridization of literary genres it is demonstrated how the 'comic' characterization of the character of Hercules passes, in the tragic genre, also through the ethos of the long solutions of iambic versification, with particular attention to the seventh element of the iambic trimeter.

E. A. Baratynsky’ influence on the 20th-century Russian philosophical lyrics is undeniable. The syntax used by the «poet of thought» demonstrates a tendency towards complication and archaization over time, which generally contradicts the aspirations for the democratization of the poetic syntax that emerged in the Karamzin era. The complexity of the syntactic structure in the poet’s search for a «metaphysical» language is achieved not by increasing the number of complex structures, which make up half of the sentences used by Baratynsky, but rather by saturating sentences with various kinds of clauses (participial, adverbial participial, adjective, noun, adverbial, infinitive) that complicate the model by conjunctive syntagms (prepositional-nominal, comparative, conjunctive), parentheses, vocatives, segments of the «nominative of the theme» type. In an effort to preserve the continuity of poetic traditions for a thoughtful, attentive reader, Baratynsky resorts to archaizing the syllable at the lexical and grammatical levels and, in particular, to using absolute clauses. Complex constructions often accompany iambic trimeter, trisyllabic metres, variable-foot verses consisting of longer and shorter lines characterised by changing the order of stress. Sentences with cumbersome isolated clauses are typical for iambic and dactylic hexameter, metres with a connotation of «high» genres. A more complex syntactic structure is observed in polymetric and variable food poems. The added complexity of syntax in long-sized verses is achieved not by increasing the number of parts of complex structures, but rather by adding clauses and homogeneous parts of the sentence. Large stanza forms are frequently divided into several simple sentences of two or three lines in length. The tradition of poetic rhythm requires a coincidence of the boundaries of quatrain and sentences – their symmetry; therefore, in quatrains, similar to couplets, the occurrence of complex and compound structures is much higher. Free stanza or the lack of stanza division additionally complicates the syntax.

Dans le trimètre iambique, il y a des clausules tragiques et d’autres comiques. Ces deux types de clausules alternent dans les scènes para-tragiques d’Aristophane, dans le concours de chant des Guêpes, dans la pesée des vers des Grenouilles et dans la parodie de l’Hélène des Thesmophories. In the iambic trimeter, there are tragic line-ends and other comic ones. These two types of clausulae alternate in para-tragic scenes of Aristophanes, in the song competition of the Wasps, in the line weighing of the Frogs and in the Helen parody of the Thesmophoriazusae.

The last chapter of the gospel of Luke includes a story of the risen Christ meeting two of his disciples on their way from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and chastising them with the poetic expression ὦ ἀνόητοι καὶ βραδεῖς τῇ καρδίᾳ ‘O foolish ones, and slow in heart’ (Luke 24.25). No commentator has ever observed that Jesus' expression occurs verbatim, in the same iambic trimeter metre, in two poetic versions of animal fables attributed to the famous Greek fabulist Aesop. It is plausible that Luke is here, as at least twice elsewhere in his gospel, tapping into the rich tradition of Aesopic fables and proverbs that were widely known throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century ce.

This article studies a Euripidean innovation: the introduction into tragic language and the subsequent (selective) usage of the expression oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην by Euripides. This negative potential optative appears sixteen times within the surviving Euripidean corpus, as a stereotypical syntactic structure that is intertwined with dramatic content and meaning. But, surprisingly, this expression is absent from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and all other tragedians. Through close reading of the sixteen Euripidean cases, the article traces and defines the conspicuous context of this expression: oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην is uttered by high-status individuals (for example, members of a royal family), when they envisage the impossible/unattainable in present and future within an intensely emotional atmosphere (ranging from hatred and loathing to agonising grief and despair), during pivotal moments of the play. Metrical convenience is also served, as the expression covers the first five elements of the iambic trimeter.

This paper is part of a project aimed to analyse the rhythm of Estonian binary verse metres. It is the first complex analysis of Estonian syllabic-accentual iamb. The analysis is comprised of poetry by 20 prominent authors from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and, all in all, more than 9000 verse lines. In order to find out which regularities are specific to poetry in general or to a particular poet, these data were compared with pseudoiambic segments extracted from prose. Differently from the earlier studies, stress is treated as a phenomenon of gradation, with altogether five different degrees of stress distinguished. The performed study showed that the rhythmical structure of iambic poems allows the clear distinction between two groups of poets, whom we conditionally call Traditionalists and Modernists.

This paper intends to show the importance of Eros in the Epodes. First of all, it is necessary to study the structure of the book: in the first part (1-10), ten poems in a combination of iambic lines (an iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter); in the second part (11-17), seven poems in various combinations. In this part, when the poet introduces new meters, Eros appears in the book and conquers the poet, modifying the poetry.

Les mots longs sont rares à la clausule dutrimètre iambique grec. Leur longueur compense en quelquesorte le déficit accentuel qu’ils entraînent. Le choliambe,quant à lui, s’écarte de cette tendance et affectionne untype prosodique précis, le trisyllabe, en le dotant d’unepolymorphie accentuelle remarquable.Longs words seldom occur in the clausula ofthe iambic trimeter. Word length is offset by the accentualdeficiency they bring about. The choliambus, though, quitediverges from this tendency and show a preference for aspecific prosodic type, the trisyllable, which it provides witha relevant accentual polymorphism.

A study of the most frequent positions of the Pronoun ἐγώ in the iambic trimeter of Greek Theatre, and in Tragedy in particular, with a comparison between Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides: Over all, Aeschylus and Sophocles seem to display opposing tendencies.

In an earlier article ( Language and Literature, 11(4)) the author argued that Hanson and Kiparsky's parametric theory failed to account for some statistically verifiable features of the English iambic pentameter, in particular, the far from random distribution of mid-line word boundaries in this metre. The present article argues that there are a series of other features of English binary metres that can only be identified and explained if parametric theory is supplemented by quantitative techniques borrowed from Russian linguistic metrics. It analyses samples of verse in various binary metres by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Longfellow, and Browning, and identifies some peculiar properties of each poet's use of tension. It measures inversion and erosion in iambic pentameters, and in iambic, trochaic and mixed tetrameters, and concludes that: (1) more than 85 percent of strong positions in the English iambic pentameter contain a stressed syllable; (2) English iambic verse contains a constraint against two consecutive strong positions lacking stress; (3) the tetrameter is more regularly iambic than the pentameter; (4) the English trochaic tetrameter allows up to half of its lines to have a non-trochaic opening; and (4) Milton's `L'Allegro' and `Il Penseroso' contain a balanced mixture of the metrical features of iambic and trochaic verse.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) AIM AND METHOD Many scholars have commented on Menander's facility in alternating between tragic and comic forms of the iambic trimeter, and the subtle effects he creates thereby in manipulating the mood of a scene. But characteristically these effects are interpreted solely in dramatic terms, and the statements made are rather vague, at the most detailed (and rarely then) merely noting that in a given line a particular tone is created by the overall form of metre used.1 What I aim to show is that deliberate metrical manipulation of a quite different kind is also involved, and in order to appreciate better Menander's art we need to attend to the metrical form of individual words. The overall effect which we can detect by these means we can perhaps call 'metametrics', an exploitation of metrical conventions that achieves an artistic end by invoking awareness of these very conventions. Menander is often regarded as a rather prosaic poet, whose linguistic effects are assumed to be mainly rhetorical or dramatic, but what follows should demonstrate his capacity for an essentially poetic achievement - essentially, since all poetry as such (as opposed, say, to rhetoric) solicits just this kind of metapoetic recognition of its linguistic artistry. The usual approach first takes for granted that Menander is entitled to all the laxity of the form of iambic trimeter he has inherited from the comic tradition, and then identifies shifts to the more stringent tragic trimeter.2 There is no doubt that Menander does create some distinctive effects in this way. But in order to observe other kinds of effect it can be more helpful to take the reverse perspective and look for individual comic variations from the tragic metrical form. Such phenomena are not intrusions, of course, but rather genre-defining signatures inscribed into the verse at particular points. Thus I do not mean here to assert that the tragic form of the trimeter is a norm for Menander but just that adopting this approach enables us to focus on the relation of a given comic metrical phenomenon to the individual word or phrase in which it occurs, something invisible from the alternative perspective. To approach Menander's versification with a view to identifying such comic metrical signatures is not to do something with no relation to what a contemporary audience would have listened for, heard, and given meaning to. After all, metrical phenomena are primarily audible, at least in orally performed poetry, and the distinctive presence of metrically paratragic passages in both Aristophanes and Menander indicates a tradition of theatrical recognition and interpretation of variations in metrical form on the Athenian comic stage. All that is involved here is a question of what range of metrical communication with the audience Menander engages in. The audience will indeed have recognised some quasi-tragic lines, in conjunction with dramatic circumstance and features of linguistic context, such as heightened style indicating romantically or ethically greater seriousness of content. Nevertheless in other metrically quasi-tragic sequences there is no such correspondence with tone or circumstance, and the effect of some, in context, is even comic.3 Metrically speaking, such lines could be called 'non-comedic' or 'neutral', but as a concession to their formal identity with the metre of tragedy I shall continue to refer to all such lines in Menander as metrically 'quasi-tragic', although without prejudice to the question of their effect in a given context. One thing that should emerge incidentally in what follows is that a metrical context consisting of such quasi-tragic lines (notwithstanding any other functions they may also have) occasionally helps to foreground, by contrast, some of Menander's precise uses of the distinctive features of the comic trimeter: comic metrical signatures.4 More generally, nevertheless, the recognisability of, and effects created by, comic metrical signatures in Menander do not depend upon their textual foregrounding by a metrically quasi-tragic context. …

El presente artículo propone una reconsideración del fenómeno de la paroxitonesis en el trímetro yámbico y el coliambo a partir de una modificación de dos supuestos metodológicos (la interpretación del principio breuis in longo y la teoría del acento) del análisis del fenómeno de Hanssen (1883), que es todavía hoy la principal fuente de datos sobre el tema, en particular en el caso del trímetro. Tras una introducción al problema y una serie de aclaraciones metodológicas, el autor estudia en orden los dos tipos de metro para concluir que las tesis de Hanssen admiten correcciones considerables. The following paper presents a review of the phenomenon of paroxytonesis in the iambic trimeter and the choriamb starting from a modification of two methodological assumptions (the interpretation of the principle brevis in longo and the theory of Ancient Greek accent) of Hanssen’s (1883) analysis of the phenomenon, which is still the main source of data on the subject, particularly in the case of the trimeter. After an introduction to the problem and a number of methodological clarifications, the author studies in order both types of meter in order to conclude that Hanssen’s theses allow for considerable corrections.

Analisis exegetico, linguistico y metrico de los fragmentos comicos citados por Favorino en Fort. 16 (=PCGadesp. 155).

La raison des normes de Wilamowitz – Knox réside dans un problème de règlement harmonieux de l'intermot à l'intérieur du deuxième côlon du trimètre iambique. Plus précisément, la matière verbale est organisée de façon à ce que les éléments métriques compensent la division du vers donnée par la position de la césure. Si à l'époque alexandrine la norme perd sa valeur, c'est qu elle se réfère au rythme du côlon et non pas du vers. Wilamowitz – Knox s bridges aims to a well-matched word disposition in the second colon of iambic trimeter. More specifically, word mass is arranged in order to reproduce the cola division given by the position of the caesura. If those bridges spare the Alexandrian trimeter, that is due to their reference to the colon's and not to the verse s rhythm.

George of Pisidia's longest and most profound work is a didactic poem whose generic title Hexaemeron or Kooloupyia is barely suggestive of its broad scope.' With 1894 lines set in correct iambic trimeter, the meter of classical dramatic dialogue, the text is, for one thing, an important witness to the classical literary tradition in seventh-century Constantinople. Four centuries after its composition, Michael Psellos thought enough of it to compare it to the poetry of Euripides.2 It echoes many classical writers, including Plato, Homer, Horace, Cicero and Seneca, and it frequently refers to episodes in Greek mythology. It even uses technical vocabulary from ancient medicine and biology to a degree of specificity not reached in the scientific handbooks.3 It also contains abundant theoretical discussion of astronomy, presenting the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory of the shape of the heavens, for example, in a favorable light alongside the biblical model.4 The poem also takes a firm, polemical stance where basic Christian doctrine is at issue. It is uncompromising, for example, in its position that the universe was created and not the product of eternal emanation.5 It makes frequent professions of faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation.6 In addition, despite its freedom from the narrative sequence of Genesis, biblical passages play a key role in its structure. Psalm 103 (LXX) in partic

The paper considers several issues of Russian Verse Theory connected with the architectonics of Lermontov’s Borodino strophe. This rare and unique strophe is characterized by an odd number of lines (seven), peculiar rhyme, and mainly by the different number of syllables in its lines: five lines of the strophe contain nine syllables of iambic tetrameter, while the third and the seventh contain six syllables of iambic trimeter. Such a structure does not allow the use of traditional (statistical) methods of the study of verse rhythmics. To prove that, this paper describes the construction of “stress profiles” for the quatrain in iambic tetrameter, and shows that it is impossible to carry out this procedure for Lermontov’s Borodino strophe. Unlike the traditional approach, our method of rhythmic-harmonic precision imposes no restrictions on the architectonics of verse, which is why it is this method that underlies the analysis of the structural harmony of the Borodino strophe given in this paper. Our analysis compares the rhythmic-harmonic potential of the strophe and the actual values of the rhythmic harmony parameter with iambic and trochaic quatrains and with Onegin’s strophe in Pushkin’s verse. Another task of our work was a rhythmic-conceptual study of the “Borodino” text. This poem was published in 1837; together with the poem “On the Poet’s Death,” it immediately moved Lermontov to the forefront of Russian poets. The main result of our work consists in proving that in its structural-harmonic aspect, the Borodino strophe is unique and, moreover, it turns out to be the perfect verse construction for the expression of a mixed sublime-descending poetic mood: inspiration (in our case, a patriotic rise) and the following disappointment. Our study shows that Lermontov’s great poem “Borodino” not only passes “the trial of harmony with algebra,” but also, from the point of view of its single a rhythm-sense, stands near the best works of the first Russian poet, Pushkin.

[1] Art song involves an oftentimes uneasy marriage between poetry and music, and nowhere is this more apparent than in their respective rhythms. In Songs in Motion Yonatan Malin wades into the sometimes fractious relationship between poetic rhythms and musical rhythm and meter in the nineteenth-century German Lied. Malin serves not as a marriage counselor, but more like a sociologist (or sociobiologist) of marriage, a neutral observer, but one with a deep knowledge of and love for the institution.[2] Malin approaches poetic and musical rhythm and meter in the Lied taxonomically, looking at the most common musical renderings for poetic feet along with their settings in lines of different length (iambic trimeter, trochaic tetrameter, and so forth). He also develops a straightforward schema for representing poetic rhythms and their (musical) metrical setting: accented syllables are indexed relative to their metric position; beats that carry weak or empty syllables are marked with a dash. So, for example, a trimeter (three-stress) line in simple duple meter might be set [1, 2 / 1 - ], that is, with strong syllables on beats 1, 2, and the following 1, and a weak or empty syllable on the next beat 2 (16-17). With this elegantly simple premise and methodology, Malin first shows the range of possibilities for putting particular poetic rhythms into various musical settings, and then-and this is the book's key contribution-he is able to show what possibilities were actually used and are most prevalent. Malin is thus able to talk about these songs in terms of the compositional choices made under a complex set of constraints, both musical and lyrical. He is also well positioned to trace the rhythmic evolution of the genre over the course of the nineteenth century, from a poetically dominated volkstumlich approach, preferred by composers and poets (especially Goethe) at the beginning of the nineteenth century to settings with far greater rhythmic variety and complexity at the century's end.[3] In his opening chapter Malin lays out his basic poetic/musical taxonomy, with an ear sensitive to the nuances of both poetic and musical rhythm. The feet of German lyric poetry involve two or three syllables, typically arranged with three or four stresses per line (trimeter and tetrameter), though dimeter and pentameter (and longer) lines do occur. As Malin notes, however, "the recurring patterns of stress and line that define poetic meter get us only so far to a full understanding of poetic motion...The relationship between poetic rhythm and [poetic] meter is analogous to the relationship between musical rhythm and meter" (9). That is, like patterns of duration in music, words can appear in different poetic meters, and have different senses of accentuation, depending upon their setting and placement. In taking account of the nuances of poetic accentuation, Malin takes special note of substitutions (e.g., replacing a strong-weak trochee with a weak-strong iamb), degrees of accentuation in longer and more complex lines, and caesuras within and enjambments between lines. He then rings the changes for trimeter, tetrameter, and pentameter line types, illustrating each with numerous musical examples. Malin shows how increasing "poetic cardinality" (moving up from 3 to 4 to 5+ stresses per line) leads to increasing complexity and variety of musical settings and textual-musical rhythmic interactions. A structural Rubicon is crossed in the case of pentameter, as the five-stress line naturally supports a trimeter subcomponent-indeed, such subdivision of the pentameter line is not only possible, but likely.[4] In laying out the interactions between poetic and musical rhythm and meter, Malin also resuscitates the work of Hans Georg Nageli (1817). Nageli spoke of the "polyrhythm," that arises from the interaction between poetic rhythm, melodic rhythm, and accompaniment rhythm (and the metrical aspects of all three). Nageli's approach marks a shift in Lied aesthetics at the start of the nineteenth century, moving from a preference for volkstumlich tunes to a more ambitious artform of higher status (32). …

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