Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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:
The Latin rhythmic hexameter [1] or accentual hexameter [2] is a kind of Latin dactylic hexameter which arose in the Middle Ages alongside the metrical kind. The rhythmic hexameter did not scan correctly according to the rules of classical prosody; instead it imitated the approximate sound of a typical metrical hexameter by having roughly the same number of syllables and putting word accents ...
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.
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 –).
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 ...
The classical alexandrine was early recognized as having a prose-like effect, for example by Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. [10] This in part explains the strictness with which its prosodic rules (e.g. medial caesura and end rhyme) were kept; they were felt necessary to preserve its distinction and unity as verse. [ 15 ]
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.