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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 ...
This line includes a masculine caesura after θεὰ, a natural break that separates the line into two logical parts. Homeric lines more commonly employ feminine caesurae; this preference is observed to an even higher degree among the Alexandrian poets. [3] An example of a feminine caesura is the opening line of the Odyssey:
In poetry, a hendecasyllable (as an adjective, hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables.The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.
In modern terms, a caesura is a natural break which occurs in the middle of a foot, at the end of a word. This is contrasted with diaeresis, which is a break between two feet. In dactylic hexameter, there must be a caesura in each line, and such caesuras almost always occur in the 3rd or 4th foot. There are two kinds of caesura:
If the line has only one foot, it is called a monometer; two feet, dimeter; three is trimeter; four is tetrameter; five is pentameter; six is hexameter, seven is heptameter and eight is octameter. For example, if the feet are iambs, and if there are five feet to a line, then it is called an iambic pentameter. [1]
Example: Paradise Lost, [1] by John Milton; Dactylic hexameter. Examples: Iliad, [2] by Homer; The Metamorphoses, by Ovid; Iambic tetrameter. Examples: To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell; Eugene Onegin, [3] by Aleksandr Pushkin; Trochaic octameter. Example: The Raven, [4] by Edgar Allan Poe; Anapestic tetrameter. Examples: The Hunting of ...
While the above classical hexameter has never enjoyed much popularity in English, where the standard metre is iambic pentameter, English poems have frequently been written in iambic hexameter. There are numerous examples from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1612) in ...
One result of this caesura is that the fourth element of the line usually coincides with the word-accent, while the third is unaccented. In lines where there is no caesura after the fifth element there is one after the seventh (often combined with one after the 3rd element). [135] An example is the fourth line of the Terence example below.