MUS 327 Analysis: Rhythm and Meter Week 5 Vocab 3: Poetic Rhythm

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MUS 327 Analysis: Rhythm and Meter Week 5 Vocab 3: Poetic Rhythm Try it yourself: Scansion of Friedrich Schiller, “Ode an die Freude” (Trochaic tetrameter) Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! Deine Zauber binden wieder Was die Mode streng geteilt; Alle Menschen werden Brüder Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. From Purdue Online Writing Lab, https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/570/02/ Syllables can either be accented, meaning they are naturally given more emphasis when spoken, or unaccented, meaning they receive less emphasis when spoken. Signs for accented/unaccented syllables: u = unaccented syllable – = accented syllable / = break between poetic feet A poetic foot is a unit of accented and unaccented syllables that is repeated or used in sequence with others to form the meter. Poetic feet are referred to using these terms: Iambic: u – (destroy) Anapestic: u u – (intervene) Trochaic: – u (topsy) Dactylic: – u u (merrily) An enjambment is the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza. Line Length shows the number of feet per line. In the case of tetrameter, there are basically four feet per line. The types of line lengths are as follows: One foot: Monometer Two feet: Dimeter Three feet: Trimeter Four feet: Tetrameter Five feet: Pentameter Six feet: Hexameter A Stanza is a group of lines, a quatrain is a group of four lines, and a couplet is a pair of lines. Declamatory Schema maps beat numbers in a given musical meter onto accented syllables in the poem in order to provide a basic outline of declamatory rhythm and patterns that recur within the song. The declamatory schema allows for a precise comparison between the structures of the poetic lines and musical phrases. Some songs conform to one schema, some use paired schemas for each couplet, some shift between two or more schemas, and some songs feature declamation too variable to be described with a schema (Malin 2010, 15–16). Labels for declamatory schema: Framing a poetic line: [ ] Beats without accented syllables: – Accented syllables between beats: a .

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Introduction to Meter
Introduction to Meter A stress or accent is the greater amount of force given to one syllable than another. English is a language in which all syllables are stressed or unstressed, and traditional poetry in English has used stress patterns as a fundamental structuring device. Meter is simply the rhythmic pattern of stresses in verse. To scan a poem means to read it for meter, an operation whose noun form is scansion. This can be tricky, for although we register and reproduce stresses in our everyday language, we are usually not aware of what we’re going. Learning to scan means making a more or less unconscious operation conscious. There are four types of meter in English: iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic. Each is named for a basic foot (usually two or three syllables with one strong stress). Iambs are feet with an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. Only in nursery rhymes to do we tend to find totally regular meter, which has a singsong effect, Chidiock Tichborne’s poem being a notable exception. Here is a single line from Emily Dickinson that is totally regular iambic: _ / │ _ / │ _ / │ _ / My life had stood – a loaded Gun – This line serves to notify readers that the basic form of the poem will be iambic tetrameter, or four feet of iambs. The lines that follow are not so regular. Trochees are feet with a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable. Trochaic meter is associated with chants and magic spells in English: / _ │ / _ │ / _ │ / _ Double, double, toil and trouble, / _ │ / _ │ / _ │ / _ Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
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Interperformative Relationships in Ingrian Oral Poetry
Oral Tradition, 25/2 (2011): 391-427 Interperformative Relationships in Ingrian Oral Poetry Kati Kallio [Transcriptions and audio excerpts of sung materials are available at http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/25ii/kallio] The Baltic-Finnic ethnic groups used trochaic tetrameter called Kalevala-meter in their oral poetry. These ethnic groups included the Finns, Karelians, Estonians, Izhors, Votes, and Ingrian-Finns. The present name of this poetic meter1 derives from the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala (1835), which was compiled by Elias Lönnrot on the basis of folk poems. Kalevala- metric poetry was mainly sung, though it served as a vehicle for proverbs embedded in speech and recited charms. This form was the central poetic language of these groups, used in epic, lyric, ritual, and occasional songs. The very first sources derive from the sixteenth century, while the largest corpora were collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the extensively documented geographical areas of Kalevala-metric oral poetry is Ingria, and in all of Ingria the majority of the sound-recordings were collected from the western districts of Soikkola and Narvusi. Beginning in 1853, many scholars traveled in West Ingria to record the predominantly female singing culture, first manually and later by using sound recording technologies. The Ingrian practices, structures, and stylistics of singing were varied, and this area is often referred as a counterpart to or a point of comparison for Karelian singing of a more male and epic character (Gröndahl 1997; Siikala 2000). In recent years, new insights have created opportunities to understand the massive archival Map 1: Ingria, Estonia, Finland, Karelia, and collections from Ingria as textualized products of Russia.
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Lerud Dissertation May 2017
ANTAGONISTIC COOPERATION: PROSE IN AMERICAN POETRY by ELIZABETH J. LERUD A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Elizabeth J. LeRud Title: Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the English Department by: Karen J. Ford Chair Forest Pyle Core Member William Rossi Core Member Geri Doran Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2017. ii © 2017 Elizabeth J. LeRud iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Elizabeth J. LeRud Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2017 Title: Antagonistic Cooperation: Prose in American Poetry Poets and critics have long agreed that any perceived differences between poetry and prose are not essential to those modes: both are comprised of words, both may be arranged typographically in various ways—in lines, in paragraphs of sentences, or otherwise—and both draw freely from the complete range of literary styles and tools, like rhythm, sound patterning, focalization, figures, imagery, narration, or address. Yet still, in modern American literature, poetry and prose remain entrenched as a binary, one just as likely to be invoked as fact by writers and scholars as by casual readers. I argue that this binary is not only prevalent but also productive for modern notions of poetry, the root of many formal innovations of the past two centuries, like the prose poem and free verse.
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Rhythm and Meter in Macbeth Iambic Pentameter (Nobles)
Grade 9 Analysis- Rhythm and Meter in Macbeth Iambic Pentameter (Nobles) What is it? Shakespeare's sonnets are written predominantly in a meter called iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme in which each sonnet line consists of ten syllables. The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or iambic feet. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. An example of an iamb would be good BYE. A line of iambic pentameter flows like this: baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM / baBOOM. Why does Shakespeare use it? When Shakespeare's characters speak in verse (iambic pentameter), they are usually the noble (aristocratic) characters, and their speech represents their high culture and position in society. It gives the play a structured consistency, and when this is changed in instances of prose such as when Macbeth writes to Lady Macbeth and when Lady Macduff talks with her son, these are normally instances where a situation is abnormal e.g. when the Porter babbles in his drunken haze. Trochaic Tetrameter (Witches) What is it? Trochaic tetrameter is a rapid meter of poetry consisting of four feet of trochees. A trochee is made up of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable (the opposite of an iamb). Here is the flow of a line of trochaic tetrameter: BAboom / BAboom / BAboom / BAboom. Why does Shakespeare use it? The witches’ speech patterns create a spooky mood from the start of the scene. Beginning with the second line, they speak in rhyming couplets of trochaic tetrameter. The falling rhythm and insistent rhyme emphasize the witchcraft they practice while they speak—boiling some sort of potion in a cauldron.
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The Poetry Handbook I Read / That John Donne Must Be Taken at Speed : / Which Is All Very Well / Were It Not for the Smell / of His Feet Catechising His Creed.)
Introduction his book is for anyone who wants to read poetry with a better understanding of its craft and technique ; it is also a textbook T and crib for school and undergraduate students facing exams in practical criticism. Teaching the practical criticism of poetry at several universities, and talking to students about their previous teaching, has made me sharply aware of how little consensus there is about the subject. Some teachers do not distinguish practical critic- ism from critical theory, or regard it as a critical theory, to be taught alongside psychoanalytical, feminist, Marxist, and structuralist theor- ies ; others seem to do very little except invite discussion of ‘how it feels’ to read poem x. And as practical criticism (though not always called that) remains compulsory in most English Literature course- work and exams, at school and university, this is an unwelcome state of affairs. For students there are many consequences. Teachers at school and university may contradict one another, and too rarely put the problem of differing viewpoints and frameworks for analysis in perspective ; important aspects of the subject are omitted in the confusion, leaving otherwise more than competent students with little or no idea of what they are being asked to do. How can this be remedied without losing the richness and diversity of thought which, at its best, practical criticism can foster ? What are the basics ? How may they best be taught ? My own answer is that the basics are an understanding of and ability to judge the elements of a poet’s craft. Profoundly different as they are, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope, Dickinson, Eliot, Walcott, and Plath could readily converse about the techniques of which they are common masters ; few undergraduates I have encountered know much about metre beyond the terms ‘blank verse’ and ‘iambic pentameter’, much about form beyond ‘couplet’ and ‘sonnet’, or anything about rhyme more complicated than an assertion that two words do or don’t.
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Poetry, Rhyme, Is Probably the Syllable Foot Consisting of an Elements One That Is Least Used in Unaccented, Lightly Accented, Modern Poetry
is two stressed syllables: // Ironically, the one poetic pyrrhic foot: two Some technique that everyone unstressed syllables, --. Rare. immediately associates with dipodic foot: a four- poetry, rhyme, is probably the syllable foot consisting of an Elements one that is least used in unaccented, lightly accented, modern poetry. Instead, most unaccented, and heavily modern poets use far subtler accented syllable. and less obvious techniques to anacrusis: prefixing an create—and conceal—their art. unstressed syllable to a line of of Many of them are explained which it forms no metrical below. part: Sport that wrinkled Care derides / And Laughter Poetry holding both his sides. feminine ending: a final unstressed syllable appended Meter to an iambic or anapestic line. MC Thompson meter: the pattern of To be or not to be, that is the stressed (accented, long) and question. Those who are not well unstressed (unaccented, short) catalexis: dropping one acquainted with good poetry syllables in poetry. or two unaccented syllables often imagine that poetry is a cadence: rhythm not truly from the end of a line-- spontaneous emotional regular. Walt Whitman wrote necessarily a trochaic or production, involving perhaps in cadences rather than in dactylic line. Dust thou art to some rhyme, but relying meters. dust returnest / Was not largely on intuition and scansion: the analysis of spoken of the soul. fortuitous accident, the muse, meter and its variations in metrical lines: for the details of genius which poetry. monometer, dimeter, trimeter, make great poems great. foot: a unit of meter with tetrameter, pentameter, Actually, poets work in a two or three syllables of which hexameter, heptameter, manner more similar to great one is usually stressed.
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Basic Guide to Latin Meter and Scansion
APPENDIX B Basic Guide to Latin Meter and Scansion Latin poetry follows a strict rhythm based on the quantity of the vowel in each syllable. Each line of poetry divides into a number of feet (analogous to the measures in music). The syllables in each foot scan as “long” or “short” according to the parameters of the meter that the poet employs. A vowel scans as “long” if (1) it is long by nature (e.g., the ablative singular ending in the first declen- sion: puellā); (2) it is a diphthong: ae (saepe), au (laudat), ei (deinde), eu (neuter), oe (poena), ui (cui); (3) it is long by position—these vowels are followed by double consonants (cantātae) or a consonantal i (Trōia), x (flexibus), or z. All other vowels scan as “short.” A few other matters often confuse beginners: (1) qu and gu count as single consonants (sīc aquilam; linguā); (2) h does NOT affect the quantity of a vowel Bellus( homō: Martial 1.9.1, the -us in bellus scans as short); (3) if a mute consonant (b, c, d, g, k, q, p, t) is followed by l or r, the preced- ing vowel scans according to the demands of the meter, either long (omnium patrōnus: Catullus 49.7, the -a in patrōnus scans as long to accommodate the hendecasyllabic meter) OR short (prō patriā: Horace, Carmina 3.2.13, the first -a in patriā scans as short to accommodate the Alcaic strophe). 583 40-Irby-Appendix B.indd 583 02/07/15 12:32 AM DESIGN SERVICES OF # 157612 Cust: OUP Au: Irby Pg.
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Early Modern Verse, Rhetoric, and Text Analysis
Early Modern Verse, Rhetoric, and Text Analysis by Charlene V. Smith Artistic Director [email protected] 2016 Our Mission: Brave Spirits Theatre is dedicated to plays from the era of verse and violence which contrast the baseness of humanity with the elegance of poetry. By staging dark, visceral, intimate productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we strive to tear down the perception of these plays as proper and intellectual and instead use them to explore the boundaries of acceptable human behavior. Table of contents I. Welcome ...........................................................................................................5 A. Our Mission .............................................................................................................................5 B. Our Values ................................................................................................................................5 1. Text ................................................................................................................................5 2. Actor ..............................................................................................................................5 3. Women ...........................................................................................................................5 4. Audience ........................................................................................................................5 C. Our History ............................................................................................................................
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Notes on Prosody
Notes on Middle English Prosody Dr. A Mitchell Sound and Sense Middle English poets typically delight in the accidental harmonies and disharmonies of verbal sounds. Sometimes sound is deliberately made to echoe sense, but more often accoustic patterns do not serve a referential or mimetic function. Syncopated rhythm may just be pleasurable to hear in the voice; variation may aid expressiveness or enhance interest; or sounds may be affective or mnemonic. Sound patterns also function as a sign of the poet’s pedigree, affiliations, or tastes. But in any event critics can probably make only modest claims about the significance of acoustic effects in the vernacular – some measure of irregularity is just a natural consequence of writing in Middle English. Rhyme is the most familiar sound pattern, and it basically demands that the poetic composition be oriented around the music (not the other way around). As a result, the semantic may be subordinated to the sonic or phonetic: e.g., syntax is inverted or contorted so as to get the proper rhyme in place; rhyme words are chosen less for sense than for sound. But of course rhymes may also produce interesting semantic juxtapositions or recapitulations, and occasionally Chaucer among others uses rhyme deftly to produce harmony and discordance, parallelism and antithesis. The main types of rhyme are the following. • end rhyme (most common) • internal rhyme (within a line) • masculine (single-sllable, or when final stressed syllable rhymes as in cat/hat) • feminine (rhymed stressed syllable followed by unstressed as in butter/clutter) • exact rhyme and rime riche (on the same sounds) • near rhyme (not a failed rhyme, it has the salutary effect of avoiding monotony) You will recognize these additional sound effects: • onomatapoia • assonance • alliteration • consonance Metrics: Alliterative and Accentual-Syllabic Some Medieval English verse is alliterative (that of Langland and the so-called poems of the Alliterative Revival), but much is what we call accentual-syllabic.
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Trochees and Iambs2
CHAPTER III. Some Remarks on the Nature of Trochees and Iambs and their Relationship to Other Metres ‘The iambic is the characteristic rhythm of people as they talk […]. The trochaic rhythm, again, is too much akin to the comic dance, as may be seen in tetrameter verse, for the rhythm of tetrameters is light and tripping. (Aristotle, 1932: 3.8, 1408b). The present study assumes that poetic rhythm in the tonic-syllabic system current in English poetry can be best accounted for by three sets of patterns: First, an abstract matrix of expectations consisting of regularly alternating strong and weak positions. Secondly, the stress-pattern of spoken language. Some aspects of this stress pattern confirm the abstract schema (one could even say that it is from these that the reader abstracts the metric pattern); some aspects deviate from it, and produce tension. These deviations, far from being signs of imperfection, of “unmetricality”, are major prosodic and expressive assets. When the reader encounters some deviation from the abstract metric pattern, he makes adjustments in its performance, so as to preserve both his metrical set, that is, his feeling of regularly alternating strong and weak positions and, at the same time, the stress pattern of his spoken language. The adjustment frequently consists in overarticu- lation, overstressing, and additional grouping of stresses. This constitutes the third pattern, the pattern of performance. The greater the deviation, the greater the adjustment required and the tighter the additional grouping, One of the basic assumptions of the present study is, then, that the rhythm of a poem is accessible only through some kind of performance; an adequate account of a poem’s rhythm can be given only by considering the interplay of three patterns: those of metre, stresses and performance.
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POETRY: METRE and BEAT Wilson
ENG 2D POETRY: METRE AND BEAT Wilson METRE is the basic rhythm structure in poetry. Many types of poetry follow specific rhythmic patterns or an order of rhythm within different types of poems. It works like this: Every word can be divided into syllables: SYLLABLE SYL LAB LE When each syllable is spoken it is either spoken STRESSED or UNSTRESSED. Symbols can be placed above each syllable to show the stress or unstress. A u (unstressed) and a / (stressed) can show the pattern visually. This is called SCANSION. A group of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a FOOT. When a foot is repeated a certain number of times we get the different types of metre: 1. IAMBIC PENTAMETRE: Five IAMBIC (unstress/stress) feet per line So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 2. IAMBIC TETRAMETRE: Four IAMBIC (unstress/stress) feet per line Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound (TETRAMETRE) That saved a wretch like me; (TRIMETRE) I once was lost, but now am found; (TETRAMETRE) Was blind, but now I see. (TRIMETRE) 3. IAMBIC TRIMETRE: Three IAMBIC (unstress/stress) feet per line (SEE EXAMPLE ABOVE) 4. A Four-Line stanza with the pattern of two lines of iambic tetrameter and two lines of iambic trimetre is a common form of BALLAD WRITING. 5. CAESURA: An intentional break in the rhythm of a poem. It is caused by the end syllable of a word not following the regular pattern 6. INVERSION: Taking a foot of poetry and making it the opposite (i.e.
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O[P Oetry C;L,.: I ] • ·
~ ·.~°:"'1e..6e..... K.-.. ..{,,~1 Editors Emeriti Tke Norton Antho ogy_5"'-J!-= .... .· .• .· ., Alexa:r1der Allison · .... .. , LATE OF T HE UNIVERSITI OF MICHIGAN o[P oetry c;L,.: I ] • ·. l . Herbert Barrows PROFESSOR EMERffl/S,. UNIVERSITIO F '.M)CHIGAN ... , FT·F T H ·j 'E' D'I TIO N ~s-, : : .. .· ·.···; .•: i::·' :· Caesar R. Blake ., ' .. ·; .:,J ·;. ·:: . ,, ·' .. UNIVERSITI 01' TORONTO ,. ; .. :•.. \ :- . · , .:'· Iylargar~t,J,i'erg1.,1~9n: ,: : UNIVERSITY 0~ Ci1.I.'.ii:0RNIA, DA.vis '': ·~1 Arthur J. Carr ·:. • ' '1 i/. ~-. : : i . LAT E OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE .., ,,;-_.1vr' · ,: · s ··1 · · · ;_. ..... ,.,..... aryJ<;> ~}er MotlNT HoLYOICE COLLEGE . ,, ::' ·.:. .•. Arthur M. Eastman I ' .. 1 LATE OF VIRGINIA P OLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY. i, .' ..: ::···, •; :- . • '1\ -. ·, ":.· . • . : ,\ :: : , ·, .;,<jon.Stallworthy··.·'.. ·· ;., ,. : Hubert M. English, Jr. ··':•,·:: -;··· 1·:· . ,, OXFORD UN~~~I~. ' . .. \ . ·• . .· ': :",i' '! · .·1J ,' , •• '• UNlVERSITI OF MICHIGAN jl: r I \ ff. D..c:,J..:J--- 2.6s'>t- :. I . .. •. i.~ ; :: . 1"· '•'· 1:!!;- : ··: 1··. i• . :·, l ,, .; ~ •,, ', 'I •' ' 'l: . it• :· ·.... .,. ,:··-...• ··:. · ,· :. :.'·,'/ ;•,,:,\·,nr,J ,J•:-; :-:" · -.. ~.1 .~.;\. .,:···:, .. ... .f>tt' . W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • New York • London .... .;;.J::, ,,. I . • · ·V ersiiication A poem is a composition written for performance by the human voice. What your eye sees on the page is the composer's verbal score, waiting for your voice to bring it alive as you read it aloud or hear it in youx; mind's ear. U11like your reading·of a newspaper, the b_est reading~that is to say, the most' sat isfying reading-of a poem involves a simultaneous engagement of eye and ear: the eye atterif?ve not only to the ·meaning cif words, but to their grouping and sp'acirig as li~es cin apage; the ear attuned to the grouping and spacing _, ·of s_ounds: The more you understand.
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