Introduction: The Failure of Meter
Keyword(s):
This chapter sets out the book's focus, namely the historical moment when the concept of “English meter” seemed to stabilize. The main intervention of this book is to alter assumptions about English meter as a stable concept, to ask what else “English” and “meter” meant, and might mean. It is the premise of this book that the literary movements around the time of the First World War, along with the national, pedagogical, and political movements in the period leading up to it, essentially erased a vast history of debates about versification in English. These debates are the grounds for the claim that poets did not always approach meter as a stable category. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.