“They say, what they like; let them say it, I don't care...”

September 8, 2021 6:30 AM

"New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that ‘stressed poetry’, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already in use in the 2nd Century CE, 300 years earlier than previously thought." The full text paper in The Cambridge Classical Journal,
posted by Wordshore (11 comments total)

To be clear, this is about "stress-based (as distinct from quantitative) poetry", not poetry in general. I.e., poetry that plays with syllable stress as opposed to syllable length.

(The approach in the article still seems very ethnocentric, but I'm not... well-versed enough in the history of poetry in languages around the world to say anything definitive.)
posted by trig at 7:03 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Here's an article on Greek City Times discussing the paper, as an alternative to the Guardian.
posted by jedicus at 7:40 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Swapped link with OP permission; carry on.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:04 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Pony derail: plz require all posts to be in iambic pentameter.
posted by sammyo at 8:24 AM on September 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

So this is the original "haters gonna hate" t-shirt.
posted by agentofselection at 8:53 AM on September 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

The approach in the article still seems very ethnocentric

Yeah, "ancestor of all modern poetry and song" definitely is, as accentual syllabic verse is not a thing in many languages. Even in English (and, I strongly suspect, modern Greek), there is a lot of poetry that doesn't use this kind of meter.

Fortunately, I don't see this claim in the actual paper, which I really enjoyed. I'm guessing a journalist added it, or maybe it was a university publicist and then both the Guardian and Greek City Times just repeated it.
posted by Hypocrite_Lecteur at 9:25 AM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Fortunately, I don't see this claim in the actual paper, which I really enjoyed.

Same. My knowledge of poetry is zero, and of ancient Greek and Greece not much better, but I've just finished the paper (which isn't long as most of it is appendices and references) and found it an easyish-to-follow and enjoyable read for many reasons. Including:

Since we all spend much of our time wishing we were loved by one person or another, the sentiment is malleable enough to suit practically any wearer.

Ouch.
posted by Wordshore at 9:37 AM on September 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Did someone say iambic? There's episode 18 of Lingthusiasm discussing the translation of Shakespearean iambic pentameters into French where this sort of stress just don't work; so the translator rendered it all in 12 syllable alexandrines. This attention to detail meant that the French perf was 20% longer. Transcript is long: ctrl+F 'iambic'
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:01 PM on September 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Very interesting! Tom Scott has a great video about stresses in poetry that should pair well with this.
posted by xedrik at 10:21 PM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

There is no global catalogue of ancient inscribed gemstones

I’m honestly astonished - I would expect two, dating from the 1800s at the latest.
posted by clew at 8:48 AM on September 9, 2021

Oddly I cannot seem to find this on a T-shirt yet.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:54 AM on September 10, 2021