Classical Hebrew Poetry

Wilfred Watson is a visiting fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Newcastle.

• Foreword; 1. Introduction; scope and aims; stylistics and Hebrew poetry; 2. Poetic Texts in other Semitic Languages; introduction; Ugaritic poetry; Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) poetic material; 3. Analyzing Hebrew Poetry: Notes on Method; terminology; method; function in poetry; archaisms; dating; textual criticism; prose or poetry?; close: notes on theory; 4. The Hebrew Poet in Action; oral poetry; oral poetry: theory; techniques and characteristics of oral poetry; ancient Hebrew oral poetry; techniques and characteristics of oral poetry in Hebrew; epic poetry in Hebrew? 5. Metre; what is metre?; metre in ancient Semitic languages; the stress (accentual) theory of Hebrew metre; other theories: survey and critique; anacrusis; functions of metre; 6. Parallelism; introductory; gender-matched parallelism; parallel word-pairs; number parallelism; staircase parallelism; other types of parallelism; 7. Stanza and Strophe; the stanza; strophic patterns: introduction; the monocolon; the abc/b'c' couplet; the tricolon; strophic patterns: the quatrain; strophic patterns: the pentacolon; higher strophic units; acrostics and related patterns; 8. Verse-Patterns; introduction; chiasmus and chiastic patterns; the terrace pattern (anadiplosis and sorites); the pivot pattern; 9. Sound in Hebrew Poetry; general; assonance; alliteration; rhyme; Closing Comments; Indices; Supplementary Bibliography; Further Additions and Corrections