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Iambic pentameter (/ aɪ ˌ æ m b ɪ k p ɛ n ˈ t æ m ɪ t ər / eye-AM-bik pen-TAM-it-ər) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama.The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line.
Milton's most notable works, including Paradise Lost, are written in blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. He was not the first to use blank verse, which had been a mainstay of English drama since the 1561 play Gorboduc.
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Also known as “un-rhymed iambic pentameter", blank verse is an unrhymed verse written in iambic pentameter. In poetry, it has a consistent meter with 10 syllables per line ( pentameter ). Unstressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables, five of which are stressed but do not rhyme.
Rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines form the heroic couplet. Two masters of the form are Alexander Pope and John Dryden. The form has proven especially suited to conveying wit and sardonic humor, as in the opening of Pope's An Essay on Criticism. ’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill;
The most famous and widely used line of verse in English prosody is the iambic pentameter, [7] while one of the most common of traditional lines in surviving classical Latin and Greek prosody was the hexameter. [8] In modern Greek poetry hexameter was replaced by line of fifteen syllables. In French poetry alexandrine [9] is the most typical ...
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Furthermore, iambic pentameter (despite its name) may be better described as a series of 10 positions than of 5 feet, especially since the sequence ××// may be interpreted as the swapping of ictic and non-ictic positions across feet, suggesting that if feet constitute any kind of boundary at all, it is a porous one indeed.