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A metrical foot (aka poetic foot) is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry.. In some metres (such as the iambic trimeter) the lines are divided into double feet, called metra (singular: metron).
Anapaest–A three-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable. Dactyl–A three-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed syllables. Spondee–A beat in a poetic line that consists of two accented syllables. It is a poetic form ...
The key idea of the theory is that poets have a store of formulae (a formula being 'an expression that is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea') [1] and that by linking the formulae in conventionalised ways, poets can rapidly compose verse. Antoine Meillet expressed the idea in 1923, thus:
A definition of musical metre requires the possibility of identifying a repeating pattern of accented pulses – a "pulse-group" – which corresponds to the foot in poetry. [ citation needed ] Frequently a pulse-group can be identified by taking the accented beat as the first pulse in the group and counting the pulses until the next accent.
Caesurae can occur in later forms of verse, where they are usually optional. The so-called ballad meter, or the common meter of the hymnodists (see also hymn), is usually thought of as a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter, but it can also be considered a line of heptameter with a fixed caesura at the fourth foot.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as "The measured flow of words or phrases in verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by the relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this". [3] Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats:
An example of scansion over a quote from Alexander Pope. Scansion (/ ˈ s k æ n. ʃ ə n / SKAN-shən, rhymes with mansion; verb: to scan), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse.
Anaclasis / ə ˈ n æ k l ə s ɪ s / [1] [2] (from the Greek ἀνάκλασις "bending back, reflection") is a feature of poetic metre, in which a long and a short syllable (or long and anceps syllable) exchange places in a metrical pattern.