Book contents
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1810s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1810s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Political Ecology of Matter
- Chapter 2 Political Action at a Distance
- Chapter 3 Wordsworth’s Churchyards
- Chapter 4 The Aesthetic Life of Racism
- Chapter 5 For the Love of Mankind
- Chapter 6 The Collector and the Collected
- Chapter 7 Rambling, Regency, Queer-Coded Communities among Anne Lister and Her Roving Ilk
- Chapter 8 The Regency of Pornography
- Chapter 9 Weakness in the Right
- Chapter 10 Romantic Decadence
- Chapter 11 Collaboration, the First Frankenstein (1818), and the Shelleys’ Creative Processes behind History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817)
- Chapter 12 Rhyme, Anticipation, and a Slip of the Ear
- Index
Chapter 12 - Rhyme, Anticipation, and a Slip of the Ear
Ottava Rima in the 1810s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2026
Edited by
Book contents
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1810s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1810s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Political Ecology of Matter
- Chapter 2 Political Action at a Distance
- Chapter 3 Wordsworth’s Churchyards
- Chapter 4 The Aesthetic Life of Racism
- Chapter 5 For the Love of Mankind
- Chapter 6 The Collector and the Collected
- Chapter 7 Rambling, Regency, Queer-Coded Communities among Anne Lister and Her Roving Ilk
- Chapter 8 The Regency of Pornography
- Chapter 9 Weakness in the Right
- Chapter 10 Romantic Decadence
- Chapter 11 Collaboration, the First Frankenstein (1818), and the Shelleys’ Creative Processes behind History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817)
- Chapter 12 Rhyme, Anticipation, and a Slip of the Ear
- Index
Summary
The 1810s saw a flurry of poems published in the Italianate form of ottava rima. This chapter focuses specifically on ottava rima poems that reflect on the role of expectation and anticipation in listening. This includes episodes of mishearing, which show how anticipation sometimes distorts perception. We hear what we expect or want to hear. The form of ottava rima, with its interlocking rhymes and closing couplet, presents an exaggerated example of the role of expectation at work in rhyme. The brief popularity of ottava rima in the 1810s also offers a neat marker for periodisation, which raises questions about how a given form was read at a given time and addresses the challenges of exemplarity and historical poetics.
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- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1810s , pp. 279 - 303Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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