Thomas Cable is Professor Emeritus in English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Meter and Melody of Beowulf and, with Albert C. Baugh, the third edition of A History of the English Language.

"This is a fine piece of work that contains very clear technical writing on problems of meter previously accessible only to specialists, and should interest anyone concerned with English verse form. Cable's debunking of the 'accentual' theory of alliterative verse, in particular, makes the book important for students of modern meters. . . . After Cable's book is published, no one will be able to say that Chaucer introduced syllable-counting to English poetry or that experimental verse with a rough equivalence in number of stresses per line draws on a long native tradition. Cable convinces me that there never was any such tradition. Accessible. . . . Sophisticated. . . . Striking. . . . Original." (Geoffrey Russom)

Thomas Cable is Professor Emeritus in English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Meter and Melody of Beowulf and, with Albert C. Baugh, the third edition of A History of the English Language.

"This is a fine piece of work that contains very clear technical writing on problems of meter previously accessible only to specialists, and should interest anyone concerned with English verse form. Cable's debunking of the 'accentual' theory of alliterative verse, in particular, makes the book important for students of modern meters. . . . After Cable's book is published, no one will be able to say that Chaucer introduced syllable-counting to English poetry or that experimental verse with a rough equivalence in number of stresses per line draws on a long native tradition. Cable convinces me that there never was any such tradition. Accessible. . . . Sophisticated. . . . Striking. . . . Original." (Geoffrey Russom)

Thomas Cable is Professor Emeritus in English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Meter and Melody of Beowulf and, with Albert C. Baugh, the third edition of A History of the English Language.

"This is a fine piece of work that contains very clear technical writing on problems of meter previously accessible only to specialists, and should interest anyone concerned with English verse form. Cable's debunking of the 'accentual' theory of alliterative verse, in particular, makes the book important for students of modern meters. . . . After Cable's book is published, no one will be able to say that Chaucer introduced syllable-counting to English poetry or that experimental verse with a rough equivalence in number of stresses per line draws on a long native tradition. Cable convinces me that there never was any such tradition. Accessible. . . . Sophisticated. . . . Striking. . . . Original." (Geoffrey Russom)