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The verse also has a stress preceding the caesura, on either the fourth or sixth syllable. The first case is called endecasillabo a minore, or lesser hendecasyllable, and has the first hemistich equivalent to a quinario; the second is called endecasillabo a maiore, or greater hendecasyllable, and has a settenario as the first hemistich. [10]
A hexameter line can be divided into six feet (Greek ἕξ hex = "six"). In strict dactylic hexameter, each foot would be a dactyl (a long and two short syllables, i.e. – u u), but classical meter allows for the substitution of a spondee (two long syllables, i.e. – –) in place of a dactyl in most positions. Specifically, the first four ...
A masculine caesura follows a stressed syllable while a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable. A caesura is also described by its position in a line of poetry: a caesura close to the beginning of a line is called an initial caesura, one in the middle of a line is medial , and one near the end of a line is terminal.
Although the rules seem simple, it is hard to use classical hexameter in English, because English is a stress-timed language that condenses vowels and consonants between stressed syllables, while hexameter relies on the regular timing of the phonetic sounds. Languages having the latter properties (i.e., languages that are not stress-timed ...
Latin readers probably gave words their natural stress, so that the quantitative metrical pattern acted as an undercurrent to the stresses of natural speech. [10] Here, for example, is a line in dactylic hexameter from Virgil's Georgics when the words are given their natural stress: quíd fáciat laétas ségetes, quó sídere térram,
While retaining the medial caesura, he often reduced it to a mere word-break, creating a three-part line (alexandrin ternaire) with this structure: [9] o o o S | o o ¦ o S | o o o S (e) |=strong caesura; ¦=word break The Symbolists further weakened the classical structure, sometimes eliminating any or all of these caesurae. [10]
Medieval French heroic epics (the chansons de geste) were most often composed in 10 syllable verses (from which, the decasyllable was termed "heroic verse"), generally with a regular caesura after the fourth syllable. (The medieval French romance (roman) was, however, most often written in 8 syllable (or octosyllable) verse
There is usually a caesura or word-break after either the 5th or the 7th syllable. In later poets, such as Persius , Martial , and Ausonius , resolution was used more freely, in any of the first four longa , and sometimes the first foot might be an anapaest (u u –).