Frontiers in Comparative Metrics V

DAY 1

10.30–11.00 Registration and Opening 
Piret Voolaid, Director of the Estonian Literary Museum
Chen Gafni about his teacher Reuven Tsur
Nila Friedberg about her teacher Barry Scherr
Mihhail Lotman on behalf of the conference committee

11.00–12.00 — Session 1. Chair: Artjoms Šeļa
Mihhail Lotman, “The Universality of Metrics: The Problem of Metalanguage”
Jean-Louis Aroui, “Joint effects of metrical recursion and the PREFER LONG-LAST constraint on traditional songs around the world”

12.00–12.30 Coffee break

12.30–14.00 — Session 2. Chair: Kati Kallio

Antonina Martynenko, “Does generational turnover explain changes in poetic history? A pilot study of the 19th-century Russian corpus”
Artjoms Šeļa, Petr Plecháč, Thomas Haider, “Mind the Meter: Large-Scale Interaction Between Form and Language”
Neža Kočnik, “Rhyme in Slovenian Dialect Poetry”

14.00–15.00 Lunch break

15.00–16.30 — Session 3. Chair: Antonina Martynenko
Rebekka Lotman, “Patterns of Multilingualism in Estonian Youth Poetry: A Statistical View”
Mikhail Trunin, ““Metrical In-Betweenness: Russian-Language Youth Poetry in Estonia (2004–2010)”
Maria-Kristiina Lotman, Kristi Viiding, “From learned models to juvenile practice: versification in the poetry by noble children and youth in early modern Livonia”

16.30–17.00 Coffee break

17.00-18.30 —  Session 4. Chair: Janika Oras
Boris Kayachev, “Metre and pragmatics: verse-initial spondaic words in Latin elegy”
Leon Wash, “In defense of homoeoteleuton as a poetical device”
Igor Pilshchikov, “The Anacreontea in English 1648–1800: A Case Study in the Evolution of Open and Closed Forms”
19.00 Reception

DAY 2

11.00–12.00 — Session 5. Chair. Frog
Peter Groves, “How Enjambments Work: the English Pentameter”
Kristin Hanson, “Contemporary English Dactylic Hexameter”
12.00–12.30 Coffee break

12.30–14.00 — Session 6. Chair. Neža Kočnik
Alessia Giordano, Stefano Versace, “On a Ternary Meter in Italian Poetry. A Bracketed Grid Account of Lavorare stanca by Cesare Pavese”
Éliane Delente, “What are the bases of line unity?”
Ulf Cronquist, “The Rhythm of Wallace Stevens’s Diagrammatical Writing”

14.00–15.00 Lunch break

15.00–16.30 — Session 7. Chair: Satu Grünthal
Frog, “On the Germanic Origin of Alliteration as a Primary Organizing Principle of Finnic Oral Poetries, the Common Finnic Tetrameter (Kalevala-Meter), and Some Implications”
Kati Kallio, Janika Oras, Mari Väina, “From Runosongs to Rhymes: Diversity and Relations of Metrical Systems in Finnic Oral Cultures”

16.30–17.00 Coffee break

17.00–18.30 — Session 8. Chair: Leon Wash
Rahel Ariel Kaur, “The interplay of rhyme in Betti Alver’s poetry”
Satu Grünthal, “Meters in Otto Manninen’s original poetry”
Jonathan Jiang, “Rhythmic Diversity in Iambic Pentameter: The Elizabethan Era to The Augustan Era”

19.00 Banquet

We warmly invite proposals and abstracts, with submissions due by 1 November.

We welcome proposals addressing any aspect of poetic form and prosody, including (but not limited to):

• Comparative and historical versification
• Poetics of sound, including phonosemantics and auditory imagery
• Meters in folklore and oral performance
• Statistical and quantitative approaches to versification and poetics
• Digital tools and corpora in the analysis of verse
• Cognitive and psychological aspects of poetic rhythm
• The interrelationship between metre and meaning
• Multilingual and cross-cultural studies of poetic form

Submissions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives are welcome. We especially encourage comparative studies that transcend linguistic, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, drawing on fields such as linguistics, literary studies, folklore, psychology, cognitive science, and computational humanities.

Abstracts (max. 300 words, in English) should be submitted by November 1, 2025, to maria.lotman@ut.ee. Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 1, 2025.

Organizing committee:

Mihhail Lotman
Mari Väina
Igor Pilshchikov
Mikhail Trunin
Maria-Kristiina Lotman
Rebekka Lotman

The conference will take place at the Estonian Literary Museum, Vanemuise street 42, Tartu

The Estonian Literary Museum is a leading centre for Estonian Studies in Estonia functioning as an integrated institution that consists of archival units and research groups. The main activities of the Estonian Literary Museum include basic and applied research mainly in the fields of folklore and the study of religions, research into literature, art and culture, cultural history, life writing, ethnomusicology and bibliography, as well as participation in the respective research and development activities in the field; strategic and systematic collection, long-term preservation and scholarly study of Estonian intangible cultural heritage; making availale the results of the scholarly research as well as source materials of the intangible cultural heritage in scholarly, educational and popularising publications as well as in mediation by digital environments and as a public service.

How to get to Tartu?

From Tallinn airport the easiest way to travel to Tartu is by bus. Buses leave for Tartu at least every hour, travel time is about 2.5 hours. In Tallinn, buses stop in front of the airport, and in Tartu the bus station is in the city centre, about 1 km from the conference venue. We advise to buy the bus ticket in advance (https://www.tpilet.ee/en/).

There is also a train connection between Tallinn and Tartu. The closest train station to the airport is Ülemiste (about 1 km). Tartu Railway Station is situated about 0.5 km from the venue. Train tickets can be purchased in advance online (https://www.elron.ee/en).

Tartu can also be reached from Riga by bus, but the travel time is about 4 hours and buses do not run very often. For additional information see https://luxexpress.eu/en/.

Finnair operates flights between Helsinki (FIN) and Tartu Ülenurme Airport (EST). Tartu Ülenurme Airport (TAY) is located 11 km from Tartu and is accessible by taxi.

The airport's information service: +(372) 605 8888, e-mail tartu.info@tll.aero
https://tartu.tallinn-airport.ee/en/transport/leaving-the-airport/

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The venue is easily accessible by foot from the city centre, bus station, and train station. Public transport buses No 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 18, 20, 24 go through the city centre and stop at bus stops Riiamäe and Pauluse, which are close to the venue. A ticket for one trip can be bought from the bus driver. For bus schedules see http://peatus.ee/#route_search/eng

Where to stay?

Tartu offers a wide variety of accommodation when choosing where to stay on your trip. Information on places of accommodation in Tartu can be found here: https://visittartu.com/stay

A list of hostels and hotels:

http://academus.ee/?lang=en
https://loominghostel.ee/eng/
https://www.tamperemaja.ee/en/genres/accommodation/
https://hektorhostels.com
http://www.dorpat.ee/hotel-tartu/
https://www.barclayhotell.org/
http://www.lydia.ee/en

Funding and Support

The conference is supported by the project KUM-TA75 Voices of Youth in Digital Age Poetry: Poetics, Attitudes, and Identities led by Rebekka Lotman, and the project PHVFI20931 (Support for National Research), led by Mihhail Lotman.