Download or read book Prose Rhythm in English (Classic Reprint) written by Albert C. Clark and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-27 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Prose Rhythm in English The suggestions which I venture to put forward in this lecture occurred to me recently while I was reading Saintsbury's History of English Prose Rhythm. I realize that I am guilty of temerity in writing upon a subject which lies outside the range of my usual work, and can only excuse myself by saying that I have studied similar phenomena in ancient and mediaeval prose. Some three years ago I published a paper upon the mediaeval cursus, which contained a brief introduction to the study of numerous prose. Since, however, I cannot hope that more than a few of my listeners may have seen this, I must begin by repeating a few points. For the origin of prose rhythm we must go to Cicero. Nature, he tells us, has placed in the cars a register which tells us if a rhythm is good or bad, just as by the same means we are enabled to distinguish notes in music. Men first observed that particular sounds gave pleasure to the ear, then they repeated them for this end. Thus, practice came first and was succeeded by theory. The rhythm of prose is based on the same principle as that of verse. This in ancient prose was the distribution of long and short syllables; in our own longue it is the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. The difference between the rhythms of prose and verse is said to be one of degree. In verse the metre is constant and unbroken, in prose the measures are loose and irregular. In this respect prose is said to resemble lyric poetry, a very suggestive remark. The theory of ancient writers is, that the whole sentence is pervaded or 'winged' by rhythm, or 'number', but that this number is most noticeable in the cadence, or clausula. The sentence is termed period, and its parts arc called commala and cola. There is a cadence at the end of the colon, and to a less extent at the end of the comma, similar to that at the end of the period. Whenever the speaker paused to draw fresh breath, he punctuated by a numerus, or cadence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.