Romantic Subjects and Iambic Laws: Episodes in the Early History of Contract Negotiations

The prosodic innovations of free verse, prose poetry, and concrete poetry that overwhelmed poetic practices in the later nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century were grounded in Romantic ideas and practices with vernacular language.  While the key agents of change were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron, John Thelwall’s involvement with the British Elocutionary Movement was equally crucial.  What Pound called “the first heave” toward prosodic freedom, “To break the pentameter” (Cantos LXXXI), took place in England between 1790 and 1819.