European Litanic Verse

This fifth volume in the Litanic Verse series is centered upon the poetics of European litanic verse (genre structure, rhythm, rhetorical figures), as well as its philosophy and cosmology, with a particular focus on the space-time matrix within which the litanic world is depicted. The content of the book moves beyond an analysis of enumerations and parallelisms as it provides an insight into relevant cultural processes, including the history of religion and literary conventions from Antiquity to Early Modernity. This allows seemingly distant topics, such as comparative versification and European identity, to be related. Theoretical considerations are accompanied by examples mostly taken from Latin, English, French, German, Iberian, Italian, Scandinavian and Slavic poetry.

Witold Sadowski heads the Section for the Poetics of Verse at the University of Warsaw. He specialises in the theory of verse and the history of literary genres. In his book Litany and Poetry (2011, in Polish) he applied the paradigm of poetic analysis to the liturgical form of the litany and introduced terminology for its description.

The poetics of European litanic verse (genre structure, versification, rhetorical figures) - The philosophy of European litanic verse - Space-time matrix within which the litanic world is depicted - Latin, English, French, German, Iberian, Italian, Scandinavian and Slavic poetry from Antiquity to Early Modernity