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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.
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.
Like many of the others in the sequence, it is written in a type of metre called iambic pentameter, which is based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions per line. Typically English sonnets present a problem or argument in the quatrains, and a resolution in the final couplet. [2]
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 ...
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.
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;
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In a line of verse that normally employs iambic meter, trochaic substitution describes the replacement of an iamb by a trochee. The following line from John Keats's To Autumn is straightforward iambic pentameter: [2] To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells