English Verse-Craft’s Exceptions and Experiment

15 April 2026

Lukas Erne

Prof. Lukas Erne, UNIGE

Dr. Devani Singh, UNIGE

Dr Daniel Sawyer, Oxford University

This event centres on the topic of verse-craft within English literary history. It will begin with a one-hour introductory exchange between Dr Sawyer and the workshop participants in which participants will have the opportunity to introduce the group to their research topic and to reflect on its relationship to questions of verse history and literary craft (1 hour). The event will further consist of a one-hour lecture by Dr Sawyer, followed by a lengthy question time, in the course of which the PhD students will be asked to engage with issues addressed during the lecture (2 hours); and an interactive workshop, led by Dr Sawyer (3 hours). How does poetic experiment work? What can we learn from the proliferation of some new ideas in verse-craft, and from the occlusion of other ideas? The deep history of Middle English poetry helpfully broaches these questions, because it saw the advent of so many new techniques. Some succeeded: rhyme and Chaucer's five-beat line have propelled much English verse right up to the present. Other experiments became invisible even to experts: an accidental Shakespearean sonnet, for example, and thousands of lines of blank verse-something invented at least twice in the Middle English period. The lecture will cover some of these examples, and consider what they might show us about literary history. The workshop will let participants explore further examples in detail themselves. Though the event uses examples c. 1080 to c. 1540, anyone interested in any questions of literary craft or verse history, in any period, will be very welcom

UNIGE

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