This volume incorporates some of the most important trends in linguistically-oriented theory of verse. It includes papers from renowned scholars, such as Paul Kiparsky, Reuven Tsur, Gregory Nagy, Seiichi Suzuki, David Chisholm, Geoffrey Russom, Marina Tarlinskaja, and others. Different aspects of comparative prosody are treated, drawing from contemporary approaches such as cognitive metrics, generative modelling, experimental phonetics, etc. Special emphasis is placed on the linguistic typology of verse forms as well as on their origin and historical evolution. The analysis encompasses different languages and poetical traditions, such as Greek, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Irish, Old Norse, Lithuanian, Serbian, English, German, Swedish, Russian, Estonian, Finnish, Nenets. The main focus is on the linguistic structures of verse in different cultures, their transformations and interrelationship. The volume aims to instigate and promote a fruitful dialogue between different schools in the study of versification.

Contents: Maria-Kristiina Lotman/Mihhail Lotman: Preface - Mihhail Lotman: Introduction: Linguistics and Poetics Revisited - Reuven Tsur: Metricalness and Rhythmicalness. What Our Ear Tells Our Mind - Ilse Lehiste: Relationship between the Prosody and the Metrical Structure of Poetry in Different Languages - Marina Krasnoperova/Evgeniy Kazartsev: Reconstructive Simulation of Versification in the Comparative Studies of Texts in Different Languages (Theoretical Aspects and Practice of Application) - Marina Tarlinskaja: Shakespeare Among Others in Sir Thomas More: Verse Form and Attribution - Ashwini Deo/Paul Kiparsky: Poetries in Contact: Arabic, Persian, and Urdu - Yasuko Suzuki: Metrical Structure as a Reflection of Linguistic Structure: A Comparative Study of Germanic Alliterative Poetry and Japanese Tanka - Artem Kozmin: Syllabic Verse and Vowel Length in Polynesian Languages: Tongan, Tuvaluan, Hawaiian, Mangarevan, Marquesan and Rapanui - Mari Sarv: Language or Culture: Possible Foreign Influences on the Estonian Regilaul Metrics - Triinu Ojamaa: Searching for Structural Boundaries in Forest Nenets Songs: A Cross-cultural Case Study - Gregory Nagy: Reading the Homeric Hexameter Aloud While Following the Accentual Markings of a Diorthotes - Lev Blumenfeld: Abstract Similarities between Latin and Greek Dialogue Meters - David Chisholm: Prosodic Feature Analysis of German Hexameter Verse - Maria-Kristiina Lotman: The Typology of Estonian Hexameter - Geoffrey Russom: Word Patterns and Phrase Patterns in Universalist Metrics - Seiichi Suzuki: Catalexis, Suspension of Resolution, and the Organization of the Cadence in Eddic Meters - Rolf Noyer: The Rhyme Quotient, Syntactic Inversion and Metrical Tension in the Verse of Edmund Spenser.

Mihhail Lotman is Professor of Cultural Theory at Tallinn University and Senior Researcher at the University of Tartu. He has published two monographs and more than 200 papers. His research interests are general semiotics and semiotics of culture; text theory and Russian literature (esp. 20th-century poetry); poetics and rhetoric; general, comparative and Russian verse studies. He is co-editor of Sign System Studies and a member of the scientific board of Traduttologia. Rivista di interpretazione e traduzione.

Maria-Kristiina Lotman is Associate Professor at the University of Tartu. She obtained her PhD in 2003. She has published ca 50 publications. Her research interests are ancient verse, its metre, rhythm, versification systems; typological analysis of quantitative verse; semantics of verse. She is co-editor of the on-line journal Studia Humaniora Tartuensia.