ABSTRACT
The period to be covered in this chapter ranges from the 1660s to the 1780s, and priority will be given to three issues: (i) the development of what in effect was a dominant verse idiom with specified rules for variation-the most significant feature of this being the widespread use of the heroic couplet; (ii) the relationship between poetic writing and a new critical tradition which supplemented advice on how to make poems with directions on how to read them; (iii) the single-handed ‘invention’ by John Milton of a metrical and stylistic framework for non-dramatic blank verse.
