An Eighteenth-Century Origin of Modern Metrical Studies? – or – Robert Lowth as a Pioneer of Ethnopoetics (original) (raw)

This paper discusses Robert Lowth's De sacra poesi Hebræorum prælectiones (1753), best known for introducing the term 'parallelism', as potentially the first study in ethnopoetics. The discussion also outlines preliminary views on changes in the use of vocabulary related to meter and poetic form. It suggests that, by arguing for parallelism as qualifying texts as metrical in the same manner as Classical meters, Lowth's study may have affected the trajectory of vocabulary leading the word 'meter' to be used as it is today. Hopefully this will stimulate future discussion.