Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Below listed are the names given to the poetic feet by classical metrics. The feet are classified first by the number of syllables in the foot (disyllables have two, trisyllables three, and tetrasyllables four) and secondarily by the pattern of vowel lengths (in classical languages) or syllable stresses (in English poetry) which they comprise.
An anapaest (/ ˈ æ n ə p iː s t,-p ɛ s t /; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry.In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
Although the pyrrhic by itself is not used in analysis of classical Greek prosody, examples exist of epigrammatic poems that employ nothing but short syllables (except at line ends where a syllable always scans long), creating a pyrrhic-like effect, such as an epigram addressed to the Cynic philosopher Diogenes and recorded in the Suda:
The English word "trapeze" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables ("tra-peze") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable ("tra-PEZE", rather than "TRA-peze"). A line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.
In strict dactylic hexameter, each foot would be a dactyl (a long and two short syllables, i.e. – u u), but classical meter allows for the substitution of a spondee (two long syllables, i.e. – –) in place of a dactyl in most positions. Specifically, the first four feet can either be dactyls or spondees more or less freely.
An iamb (/ ˈ aɪ æ m / EYE-am) or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry.Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in καλή (kalḗ) "beautiful (f.)").
In English meter indisputable examples are harder to find because metrical feet are identified by stress, and stress is a matter of interpretation. [6] For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (in iambic pentameter) would normally be interpreted as two spondees: Crý, crý! Tróy búrns, or élse let ...
A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line missing two syllables is called brachycatalectic. A line with an additional syllable is called ...