Recent decades have witnessed an increasing interest in the study of language and meter, driving new studies in new and often radically divergent directions. Linguistic analysis now supplements increasingly meticulous editions of poetic works, with quantitative methods allowing for the rapid testing of hypotheses and aiding the study of a far wider range of metric traditions than was previously possible. Two decades into the twenty-first century, such methods promise that much more can still be done. The essays collected in the volume capture this optimistic mood, proposing various avenues for scholarly progress.Most of the contributions were originally presented as papers at the interdisciplinary conference “Language and Meter in Diachrony and Synchrony,” held in Munich on September 2–4, 2013, hosted by the Department of Historical and Indo-European Linguistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. In this review I will address the theoretical interests of the volume in the context of general questions pertaining to the relationship between 1) language and meter and 2) metrics and practices (performance and composition, music, dance, and genre), focusing on how these two elements fit together and are causally connected.I have divided the essays into five groups according to the metric tradition treated. This permits us to take account of their relationship with previous scholarship while dealing with the criteria proposed.One-third of the contributions center on the Ancient Greek tradition. Paul Kiparsky introduces generative metrics; analyzes the use of syncopation in the Vedic, classical Sanskrit, Persian, and Ancient Greek traditions; revises previous attempts to study the history of the hexameter (West 1973a; Nagy 1974; Berg 1978; from a different standpoint, Berg and Lindeman 1992; Berg and Haug 2000); and considers the themes (Watkins 1995) and formulae of Ancient Greek poetry, taking issue with the idea that formulae could generate meter. Concerning this last point, based on syntactic and morphological irregularities, Claire Le Feuvre argues that the transitive use of kamnō, in the sense of “make, fashion,” was an innovation abridged to fit Homeric diction. Consequently, the transitivization of the verb was the result of a syntactic reanalysis intended to meet the requirements of the meter as well as to employ a formulaic expression on the spot (from a different standpoint, see Katz 2013a; 2013b; Nussbaum 1998). However, as Martin L. West observes, metrical rules are not always fully applied. He focuses on this aspect at three levels: 1) Homeric versification with metrical irregularities that have a historical grounding, 2) lines with individual explanations, and 3) several lines that for some unaccountable reason have an “unskilful versification” (376; see also Pontani 2005). Eva Tichy (2010: 346–47) makes use of Nils Berg's work on the history of the hexameter as a practical starting point in the design of her empirical research on the text of the Iliad. As she argues, the older evidence was entrenched both in an Aeolic tradition of oral lyric, and in Homer's own Ionic hexameters (see also Tichy 2012).The Italic tradition and its Indo-European relatives and antecedents are treated in three articles, of which two stand out in particular. Angelo Mercado gives an account of how the quantitative-syllabic meters reconstructed for the Indo-European tradition evolved into the accent-based proto-Italic meters. Continuing on from Angelo Mercado's work on Italian meter, Vincent Martzloff argues that strong metric positions are preferentially implemented by stress at word level in a way that reflects the principle of relative stress.The Indo-Iranian tradition is the subject of two articles. Following on from earlier work on Rgvedic poetics, Dieter Gunkel and Kevin M. Ryan support their theory with both valid arguments and new phonological data, to produce evidence that the distich/couplet acted as a unit for putting the Rgveda together. They further argue that, according to this evidence, the poets discussed distichs of octosyllabic dimeter verses as units that are shorter than those of the longer trimeter verses.1 In Gunkel and Ryan's view, the dimeter distich definitely occurs in the oldest Indic poetry. Based on his work from 2014, Kümmel first gathers evidence that syllable weight in Old Avestan was calculated similarly to the way it was in Sogdian, and differently from the way in Vedic, as it first appears. Kümmel analyzes Sogdian-style in comparison to Vedic-style scansion, noting several new attributes, including the frequency with which there is an iambic rhythm at the beginning of the commonest Gathas meter.Melanie Malzahn and Michael Peyrot deal with Tocharian metrical traditions. Based on earlier work, Malzahn (2010, 2012a, 2012b) comes to support the notion that the poets chose a wide range of forms, from archaic to innovative, valid for stylistic-metric purposes. Peyrot compares Tocharian A and B metrical traditions, concluding that Tocharian A borrowed and then worked out again the metrical tradition of Tocharian B. Consequently, he shows that the Tocharian A language was significantly influenced by Tocharian B.2 Tocharian A has names, marked names, and a simpler metrical system than that of Tocharian B, which as the lectio difficilior is more original.Two studies address Germanic alliterative verse. Building on previous work, Rosemarie Lühr (1982) analyzes passages from the Muspilli and the Hildebrandlied, arguing that the poet who wrote these works deviated from the normal alliterative scheme to mark the beginning and end of direct speech. Paul Widmer assesses the latent links that connect North Germanic and Insular Celtic court poetry (383). As he argues, North Germanic, Irish, and Brythonic traditions all developed by emulating the Leitkultur of the Roman world. Rhyme, as a principle of poetic design, was the creative and structural means of verse par excellence in the Leitkultur. This was emulated in many ways in the above-mentioned vernacular poetry.Alongside fifteen contributions distinguished by cutting-edge scholarly methods, and serving as a repository of data for ongoing research on these subjects, this volume will be both stimulating and useful for many readers. It will also prove essential for those investigating similar issues as they relate to other languages for which the topic of metric tradition has yet to come under sustained scrutiny.