Prosody graph

R. S. Gwynn · #1 07-02-2016, 06:20 PM

This is copied from a post by Becca Menon on the Wom-Po list-serve:

A friend who is kindly helping me build a website asked, “What is ‘prosody,’” then looked up the use of the term in Ngram Viewer - Google Books, google’s scanning of many books over a selected period of years.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...SODY%3 B%2Cc0

Books must follow events, but what do you think happened in the 1740-50’s and between the Wars?

Edward Zuk · #2 07-04-2016, 01:40 AM

What a fascinating graph! A quick search leads to the fact that the 4-book version of the Dunciad was published in 1742, and the forgettable playwright Colley Cibber wrote the first of several attacks on Pope in the same year. Meanwhile, Samuel Johnson was putting out his various lives of the poets in the 1740’s, Edward Young’s Night Thoughts appeared with its blank verse to challenge the heroic couplet, and a new edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1743-44, complete with emendations by Pope et al. In other words, there were numerous literary controversies and events in which Grub Street hacks could accuse each other of not understanding prosody.

Wouldn’t the intra-war years be explained by the rise of vers libre and Modernism to challenge traditional prosody?

R. S. Gwynn · #3 07-04-2016, 10:30 AM

I can understand the rise in the 1740s but would have to consult the OED to determine when "prosody" came into general use. I don't see that much of a drop from 1920-1950, at least not as dramatic a rise and fall as in other periods. This is, of course, a highly unscientific methodology even if the graph is interesting. Obviously, using "meter" wouldn't fit the bill as there are too many other uses of the term. "Metrical" might work, though.