Once upon a Time: A Reader-Response Approach to Prosody

Abstract

ne would expect the study of literary prosody, of all disciplines, to focus on the phenomenon of reading. Its ostensible subject is the rhythms and patterns of sound in poetry, and these cannot be conceived without the prior notion of a reader perceiving or reproducing them. It may be possible to imagine an idea existing in free space, independent of any thinker, since ideas are often envisaged as static entities, able to be packed away in spaces of memory or in books; but rhythm depends essentially on movement and must be reenacted in real time in order to exist.