Prosody Flashcards
The recurrence of stress & emphasis @ irregular intervals, affording a pleasurable rise & fall. Never falls in a regular pattern.
Prose Rhythm
7 line stanza ( a form of - is Rhyme Royal).
Septet
A system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into feet, indicating the locations of accents, & counting the syllables. The meter, once the -ing has been performed, is named according to the # of feet in a line ( monometer, dimeter, etc.). Main feet: iamb (U/), trochee (/U), anapest (UU/), dactyl (/UU), spondee (//), phyric (UU).
Scansion
In prosody- the emphasis given to a syllable in articulation. In versification- usually implies contrast, accented & unaccented syllables.
Accent
Incompleteness of the last foot of a line. Truncation by omission of 1 or 2 final syllables. The opposite of anacrusis.
Catalexis
A slanting or upright line used in prosody to mark off feet, as in the following:
The sun | is warm | the sky | is clear.
The waves | are dan | cing fast | & bright.
Virgule
UU- unstressed, unstressed.
Phyrrhic
Extra metrical unstressed syllable added to the end of a line of iambic ( U/+U) or anapestic (UU/+U) rhythm.
Feminine Ending
The unit of rhythm in a verse.
Foot
Line of verse that ends on a stressed syllable as does any regular iambic line.
Masculine Ending
Recurrence in poetry of a rhythmic pattern.
Ex: monometer (1), dimeter (2), etc.
Meter
“Variable form”- applied to rare verse forms that pressures rhythm, meter, & stanza, but varies rhyme scheme from stanza to stanza.
Ex: W.H. Austen’s “Leap Before You Look” rhymes-abab bbaa baba abba aabb baba-, in effect turning itself inside out.
Poikilomorphism
A musical term for the effect produced by a temporary displacing or shifting of the regular beat.
Syncopation
U/- unstressed, stressed.
Iamb
A couplet- any 2 consecutive lines of similar form. An epigram or maxim completely expressed in couplet form.
Distich
//- stressed, stressed.
Ex: football
/ /
Spondee
The placement of a pause or caesura in the syllabilic middle of a line of verse. In line w/ an even # of feet & of syllables, a -ing caesura has the effect of stability, Asian Thomas Harely’s “& consummation comes, & jarster homispheres.”
Balance
A cutting short of words through the omission of a letter or a syllable. Usually confined to omission of vowels inside a word.
Ex: Ev’ry for every is - often used in verse where a desired meter is sought.
Syncope
The name of the symbol (U) used to indicate a short syllable in scansion & an unstressed syllable.
Breve
A poetic foot in which the 1st syllable is accented, as in a trochee (/U) or dactyl (/UU).
Falling Rhythm
A meterical system employed by poets before 1100. Consists of = #s of accented syllables per line & a varying # of unaccented syllables. - - - line had 2 hemistich ( half lines ) having 2 accented syllables each & separated by a caesura & contain alliteration. In modern times, W.H. Auden used this system in his long poem The Age of Anxiety.
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Old English Versification
Opposite of anapest, (/UU)- stressed, unstressed, unstressed.
Ex: merrily
/ U U
Dactyl
UU/- unstressed, unstressed, stressed.
Anapest
Metrically complete. Applied to lines that carry out the basic metrical & rhythmic pattern of a poem.
Acatalectic
Lacking a syllable in the middle & @ the end. This happens commonly in the 3rd & 6th feet of the 2nd line of the elegiac couplet in classical languages.
Dicatalectic
Stress that falls on a syllable. It does NOT refer to the stressed syllable, but the stress itself (/).
Ictus
Group of 8 lines of verse.
Octet
Stanza appearing @ the close of certain kinds of stanzas. @ times it serves as a summary or conclusion. Sometimes functions as a “ sending “ or “ dispatching “ poem ( talking w/ common diplomatic meaning of - as “ one who is sent.”
Envoy (envoi)
A 3-line stanza which rhymes -Ana bcb cdc ded- & so forth ( an interlocking rhyme scheme). A set of such stanzas can close w/ some variation such as a couplet to close the loose ends of the rhymes. Usually written in iambic pentameter (U/). It is a form popular w/ W.H. Auden.
Terza Rima
A stanza of 8 iambic pentameter lines rhyming -abab abcc-. Boccaccio is credited w/ originating it. Some English poets who used it are Wyatt, Spenser, Mitton, Keats, Byron, Longfellow, Browning & Yeats.
Ottava Rima
A stanza of 5 lines.
Quintain (quintet)
The recurrence of certain sounds & kinds of sounds. In poetry, 3 different elements may function in a pattern of regular occurrence: quantity, accent, & # of syllables. In English poetry, the -ic pattern is most often established by a combination of accent & # of syllables. - can be rising as in iamb & anapest or falling as in trochee & dactyl.
Rhythm
Foot w/ 3 syllables ( //U). Opposite of anapest.
Anti Bacchius
The study of the patterns of rhythm in poetry.
Metrics
Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs.
Heroic Couplet
A break or pause in a line verse. In Classical literature, it divided a foot between 2 words, usually near the middle of the line.
Ex: “ To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell:
Had we but world enough, || & time
This coyness lady, || were no crime.
We would sit down, || & think which way.
To walk || & pass our long lores day.
If the - comes after an unstressed syllable l, it is called feminine -.
Caesura (cesura)
A pause or break between 2 vowel sounds not separated by a consonant. Opposite of elision. Occurs only in a break between 2 words when the final vowel of the 1st & the initial vowel of the 2nd are each sounded. In logic - signifies the omission of 1 of the logical steps in a process of reasoning.
Ex: Montana “pause” Atlanta.
Hiatus
A stanza widely used for hymns, consisting of 4 lines rhyming either
-abab- or -abcb- & usually having the 1st, 2nd, & 4th lines in iambic trimeter & the 3rd in iambic tetrameter.
Ex: The hymn “Blessed Be the Tis That Binds” is in - -. Also, Thomas Hardy used it in “I Look into My Glass” & “The Man He Killed” & Emily Dickinson used it in such poems as “The Bustle in a House” & “There’s a Certain Slant of Light”.
Short Measure
/U- stressed, unstressed.
Trochee
In metrics, the omission of a syllable or syllables @ the beginning or ending of a line.
Truncation
Used in prosody for rhyming syllables that bear significantly different levels of accent, as in the rhyme of “appear” & “reindeer” in Clement Morre’s “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.”
Anisobaric
