Chaucer's Prose Rhythms

Abstract

Experimentation in prose rhythms is generally conceded to be a sign of mature literary art. It can not, in fact, be conceived to occur unless craftsmen in letters have become so far aware of their aesthetic medium—its physical basis and its principles—that they wish to subject it to deliberately planned tests for effect. The obvious meters of verse require much less awareness. Prose experiments appear characteristically within and just after periods of great artistic productivity, when a galaxy of creative writers has engendered the requisite literary self-consciousness. Such a period was surely the fourteenth century in England, and it should be a matter of no surprise if therefore several prose writers of the time adopted an attitude of experimentation.