Testing for Mathematical Lineation in Jim Crace's "Quarantine" and T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

Abstract

The mathematical distinction between prose and verse may be detected in writings that are not apparently lineated, for example in T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton", and Jim Crace's "Quarantine". In this paper we offer comments on appropriate statistical methods for such work, and also on the nature of formal innovation in these two texts. Additional remarks are made on the roots of lineation as a metrical form, and on the prose-verse continuum.