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Metrical foot (aka poetic foot): the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry; Prosody: the principles of metrical structure in poetry; Stanza: a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem.
In some kinds of metre, such as the Greek iambic trimeter, two feet are combined into a larger unit called a metron (pl. metra) or dipody. The foot is a purely metrical unit; there is no inherent relation to a word or phrase as a unit of meaning or syntax, though the interplay between these is an aspect of the poet's skill and artistry.
In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical metre. The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two morae.
The metrical stresses alternate between light and heavy. [9] It is a heavily regular beat that produces something like a repeated tune in the performing voice, and is, indeed, close to song. Because of its odd number of metrical beats, iambic pentameter, as Attridge says, does not impose itself on the natural rhythm of spoken language. [10]
The chief metrical ictus of the line, in other words the syllables at which the baton of a conductor keeping time would fall, were in an Iambic Trimeter the 2nd, 4th, and 6th Arses [34] (in a Trochaic Tetrameter the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th). Hence the necessity of exhibiting the metre in its pure form at these parts of the line (Bassus ap. Rufin ...
Anapaest–A three-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable. Dactyl–A three-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed syllables. Spondee–A beat in a poetic line that consists of two accented syllables. It is a poetic form ...
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot ...
Another metrical system was put forward by John C. Pope in which rhythmic stress is assigned using musical patterns. This system seems to make more sense when considering that the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was set to music. An explanation of the Pope system is also included in Cassidy & Ringler [16] and in Eight Old English Poems. [17]