ABSTRACT
1971 and 1972. Robinson deserves consideration, particularly his 1971 study of Chaucer’s verse form (prosody) which tackles the problem that if we follow to the letter the instructions of how to pronounce Chaucer, as given in most editions, the result is dry and frequently cumbersome. Chaucer is here discussed in the context of poetry and metre in general, with some space given to his immediate inheritors and imitators, Hoccleve and Lydgate. For Robinson, Chaucer’s verse at its best is ‘the simulation of speech by a heightening of speech which can yet seem fresh and natural.’ Crucially however, verse is not simply imitating speech:
