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A History of European Versification$
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A History of European Versification

M. L. Gasparov, G. S. Smith, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, G. S. Smith, and M. Tarlinskaja

Print publication date: 1996

Print ISBN-13: 9780198158790

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158790.001.0001

Introduction

Chapter:
(p. 1 ) 1 Introduction
Source:
A History of European Versification
Author(s):

M. L. Gasparov

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158790.003.0001

This chapter introduces the definition of verse, its origin, and its evolution. The word verse comes from the Greek word stichos, which means ‘row’, and its Latin synonym versus, which means ‘turn’ — collectively, ‘return to the beginning of the row’. This is differentiated against prose which is that ‘which goes straight on’ without any turns. Comparative historical metrics, a discipline which evolved after comparative philology, studied how verses evolved into various Indo-European languages resulting in some degree of difficulty. This chapter describes studies made regarding these transformations.

Keywords:   verse, stichos, versus, origin, evolution, prose, comparative historical metrics

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