Comparative metrics sub specie philologiae: An international symposium

The study of meter in the 20th century has generally been marked by the foregrounding of some types of verse that proved amenable to a particular theoretical approach (e.g. English iambic pentameter in generative metrics, Russian iambic tetrameter in statistical work on verse, Greek hexameter in diachronic reconstruction), to the detriment of others.

Over the past several years the Linguistics and Poetics research group at the University of Oslo has sought to circumvent this kind of bias by exploring various manifestations and uses of poetic language in ancient (Greek) and Medieval (Latin, Germanic) cultural milieus. We have dwelt on the diversity of attested literary cultures (sometimes proliferating within a single national “tradition”) and prioritized an empiricist ethos over the goal of finessing any particular methodology.

The international symposium “Comparative metrics sub specie philologiae” aims to expand our vision of comparative metrics by interrogating and juxtaposing novel, tailor-made, and empirically-driven approaches to cross-culturally diverse uses of poetic meter.

Time and place: –, Georg Morgenstiernes hus, room 452
Bildet kan inneholde: historie, maleri, illustrasjon, mengde, slag.

Paris and Helen meeting King Priam, British Library, ms. Harley 4376 (fragment), Wikipedia Commons

International invited speakers

 

Andrei Dobritsyn (University of Lausanne)

Kati Kallio (University of Helsinki)

Elena Kolla (University of Helsinki)

Axel Palmér (University of Uppsala)

Rafael Pascual (University of Oxford)

Bianca Patria (University of Florence)

 

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

 

MORNING SESSION: EXPERIMENTING WITH METHODS

Chair: Eirik Welo (University of Oslo)

10:00 Axel Palmér (University of Uppsala), Meter and Mnemonics in Early Vedic Sanskrit Poetry

10:35 Kati Kallio (University of Helsinki), Finnic Oral Poetry: Issues in Computational Analysis of Poetic Meter

COFFEE BREAK

11:20 Johanna Treider (University of Oslo), Modality Reversal in Seneca's Thyestes: Toward a Metrical Application of Freidenberg's Theory of Image and Concept

11:55 Andrei Dobritsyn (University of Lausanne), On the Rhythm of French Verse from the Perspective of Syllabotonic Versification

12:30 Boris Maslov (University of Oslo) and Tatiana Nikitina (CNRS), Correlating Rhythm and Rhyme in Modern Russian and English Verse

 

13:15 LUNCH for participants (Frederikke, University cafeteria)

 

AFTERNOON SESSION: PUTTING METER TO WORK (AND TO PLAY)

Chair: Jon Gunnar Jørgensen (University of Oslo)

14:30 Rafael Pascual (University of Oxford), The Lighter Side of Beowulf

15:05 Bianca Patria (University of Florence), A Peculiar Type – Metrical Oddity as a Criterion for the Attribution of Rǫgnvaldr Kali’s Lausavísur

15:40 Nelson Goering (University of Oslo), Laȝamon: Between Old and Middle English Alliterative Metres

COFFEE BREAK

16:30 Klaus Johan Myrvoll (University of Copenhagen), The Sonority Minimum and the Syllabification of Old Norse

17:05 Elena Kolla (University of Helsinki), Integrating Metrical Analysis into Multidimensional Models of Poetic Style: The Case of Maximilian Voloshin

17:40 Mikael Males (University of Oslo), When Metre Plays a Trick on us

19:30 DINNER for participants (location TBA)

 

Conference is co-organized by Mikael Males (ILOS), Boris Maslov (IFIKK), and Eirik Welo (IFIKK)

Organiser

Linguistics and Poetics research group
Published Sep. 19, 2026 2:47 PM - Last modified Sep. 19, 2026 2:47 PM
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