This unprecedented book on comparative prosody explores the history of Hebrew verse during three millennia of changing cultural and linguistic contexts. Benjamin Harshav offers
an innovative approach to the free rhythms of biblical poetry and prose, examines the brilliant invention of rhyme by the Paitan—the earliest rhyme in the Mediterranean world—and the discovery
of accentual-syllabic meters, which have since dominated English, German, Russian, and Hebrew poetry for centuries, in a Yiddish romance written in 1508. The book explores the
constraints and kinds of modern free rhythms as exemplified in Yiddish poetry.
