This Handbook of Poetic Forms aims to offer historically informed approaches to a wide variety of poetic forms. A particular emphasis will be on considering poetic form in dialogue with the cultural context in which it is being used, as well as within the literary tradition of each form, and to explore the stable as well as the historically variable affordances of each form in such contexts. Hereby, the focus lies on prescriptive forms, that is, on poetic forms which are defined by or at least associated with specific metrical, stanzaic or overall structures (or the absence of such), rather than poetic genres that are primarily characterised by similarities in subject matter (like the elegy or the ode). While this Handbook should be accessible to students, its aim is not to offer basic introductions, but rather to broaden a historical and functional understanding of the poetic forms it covers, and to engage with poetic forms not as givens, but as historically-contingent processes of formation. Above all, this Handbook’s formalism is new formalist in emphasising historical awareness and contextualisation.
