The Turn of Rhythm: How Victorian Poetry Shaped a New Concept

Incredibly, until the cusp of the nineteenth century, the word rhythm was not widely used. It likewise had no cultural connotations. This book traces the complex and overlooked way in which anglophone culture "got rhythm," concentrating on the pivotal role that poetry played in that narrative.

The Turn of Rhythm offers the first book-length study of this distinctively nineteenth-century phenomenon. Ewan Jones uncovers how several nascent discursive fields—ranging from speech therapy to ideal...