Prosody

PROSODY signifies the systematic study of versification, that is, of the principles and practice of meter, rhyme, and stanza forms.

METER:  In all sustained spoken English we feel a rhythm, i.e., a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in the stream of sound.  If this rhythm of stresses is structured into a recurrence of regular—approximately equivalent—units, we call it meter.  Compositions written in meter are known as VERSE.

FOOT is the combination of a strong stress and the associated weak stress or stresses which make up the recurrent metric unit of a line.  The relatively stronger-stressed syllable is called “stressed”; the relatively weaker stressed syllables are called “light”, or “slack”, or simply “unstressed.”

The four standard feet distinguished in English are:

IAMBIC /_ '/  e.g.: How vainly men themselves amaze. (Marvell)

ANAPESTIC /_ _ '/ e.g.: I am out of humanity’s reach. (Cowper)

TROCHAIC /' _/  e.g.: There they are, my fifty men and women. (Browning)

DACTYLIC /' _ _/ e.g.: Eve, with her basket was / Deep in the bells and grass. (Hodgson)

Two other feet, often distinguished, occur only as occasional variants from standard feet:

SPONDAIC /' '/ e.g.: Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke. (Browning)

PYRRHIC /_ _/ e.g.: My way is to begin with the beginning. (Byron)

A METRIC LINE is named according to the number of feet composing it:

MONOMETER: one foot

DIMETER: two feet

TRIMETER: three feet

TETRAMETER: four feet

PENTAMETER: five feet

HEXAMETER: six feet (an ALEXANDRINE is a line of six iambic feet)

HEPTAMETER: seven feet

OCTAMETER: eight feet

TO SCAN a passage of verse is to go through it line by line, analyzing the component feet, and also indicating where any major pauses fall within a line.  The act of scanning a poem is called SCANSION.

When a line ends in an unstressed syllable is said to have a FEMININE ENDING.

When a line ends in a stressed syllable is said to have a MASCULINE ENDING.

RHYME is the repetition of the same or similar sounds often occurring at set intervals and most obviously appearing at the end of a line.

END RHYME, by far the most frequent type, occurs at the end of a line.

INTERNAL RHYME occurs within a line.

DOUBLE RHYME is a rhyme involving two syllables.

TRIPLE RHYME is a rhyme involving three syllables.

PERFECT RHYME or FULL RHYME or TRUE RHYME occurs when the correspondence of the rhymed sounds is exact.

EYE RHYME occurs when words are spelled the same and look alike but sound differently.

IMPERFECT RHYME or PARTIAL, NEAR, HALF or SLANT RHYME occurs when there are changes within the vowel sounds of words meant to rhyme.

RHYME ROYAL is a seven-line, iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc.

OTTAVA RIMA has eight lines; it rhymes abababcc.

BLANK VERSE consists of lines of iambic pentameter which are unrhymed—hence the term “blank.”  Of all English verse forms it is closest to the natural rhythms of English speech; as a result it has been more frequently and variously used than any other type of verse. 

FREE VERSE, also known as OPEN FORM verse, or by the French term VERS LIBRE, is printed in short lines instead of with the continuity of prose, and has more controlled rhythmic pattern than ordinary prose; but it lacks the regular syllabic stress pattern, organized into recurrent feet, of traditional meter.  Most free verse also has irregular line lengths and lacks rhyme. 

A LINE OF VERSE is a single line of words in a poem.

A STANZA (Italian for “stopping place”) is a grouping of the lines in a poem, set off by a space in the printed text.

IN MEMORIAM STANZAS are iambic tetrameter quatrains with a rhyming scheme abba.

A QUATRAIN, or four-line stanza, is the most common in English versification, and is employed with various meters and rhyme schemes.

A COUPLET is a pair of rhymed lines.

A TERCET or TRIPLET is a stanza of three lines, usually with a single rhyme.

Figures of speech and poetic devices

ALLEGORY is a narrative in which one object or idea is represented in the shape of another. 

ALLITERATION is the repetition of an initial sound, which adds to the musical quality of any line or group of lines within a poem.  The term is usually applied only to consonants, and especially when the recurrent sound occurs in conspicuous position at the beginning either of a word or of a stressed syllable within a word.

ALLUSION is a reference, explicit or indirect, to a well-known person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage.

ANADIPLOSIS is the repetition of a word at the end of a clause at the beginning of another.

ANAPHORA is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive lines.

APOSTROPHE is to direct the attention to a personified abstraction.

ASSONANCE is the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words.

CHIASMUS takes place when the word order in one clause is inverted in the other.

CONSONANCE is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line.

ELLIPSIS is the omission of words.

HYPERBATON is the use of an unusual or inverted word order.

HYPERBOLE is the exaggeration of a statement.  “Everyone knows that” meaning “That’s common knowledge.”

LITOTES is the assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary. For example, “not bad" meaning “fine”.

METAPHOR is a statement in which one entity is another for the purpose of comparing them in quality.

METONYMY occurs when the literal name of a thing is applied to another with which it has become closely associated.  For instance, "the crown" meaning "the monarch”.

ONOMATOPOEIA is a word that sounds like its meaning.

OXYMORON is the use of two terms together that normally contradict each other.

PERSONIFICATION is to apply human qualities to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.

A PUN is a play on words that will have two meanings.

RHETORICAL QUESTION is a question that is asked not for the sake of getting an answer but for asserting something

SIMILE is a comparison between two things using “like” or “as”.

SYMBOLISM occurs when an image stands for something entirely different.  For example, the “ocean” may symbolize “eternity.”

SYNECDOCHE is a form of metonymy, in which a part stands for the whole. “All hands on deck.”

SYNESTHESIA is the description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.

ZEUGMA is an expression in which a single word stands in the same grammatical relation to two or more other words, but with some alteration in its idiomatic use or significance. “He lost his coat and his temper”.

CAESURA is a strong phrasal pause within a line.

END-STOPPED LINE is a line that ends with a pause in the reading.

ENJAMBMENT OR RUN-ON LINE takes place when a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) is broken by the end of a line or between two verses.

Lyric and epic poems

Greek writers signified by “lyric” a song rendered to the accompaniment of a lyre.  The term is now used for any fairly short, non-narrative poem presenting a speaker who expresses a state of mind or process of thought and feeling.  Lyric speakers may be represented as musing in solitude.  Although the lyric is uttered in the first person, we should be wary about identifying the “I” in the poem with the poet.  In many poems, the speaker is clearly not the author but an invented character, and one who may be very different from the actual poet.  

On the other hand, "epic" is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, told in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic figure.