Prosody
Dr. Amitayu Chakraborty
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Durgapur Women’s College
Definitions
• Prosody: : The study of poetic meter and the
art of versification
• Meter: The aspect of time, involving rhythm
and accents of poetry
• Rhythm: The arrangement of spoken words
alternating stressed and unstressed elements
• Accent: The relative prominence of a syllable
or musical note; It denotes verbal stress
Rhyme V’s Rhythm
• A rhyme is two or more words or phrases that
repeat the same sounds. The matching
sounds are usually, but not always, at the end
of poetic lines.
• The rhythm of a poem gives it its flow
and beat
• Unlike rhyme, rhythm is an essential element
of poetry
Rhythm & Meter
• In poetry, rhythm is expressed through stressed
and unstressed syllables
• Meter (from Latin metrum, “measure”) is simply
a controlled pattern of auditory stimuli
established in the opening lines of a verse
composition, a pattern that the audience
immediately hears and thereafter expects to
continue hearing (with some variation)
throughout the work.
• Poetry is a literary work composed in meter
Scansion
• Analysis of verse into metrical patterns
• Readers of poetry record the beat of poetic
words by dividing them into kinds of feet
based on lengths of syllables, and locations of
spoken accents, the portions of words we
typically say louder.
Foot
• A foot is the metrical unit by which a line of
poetry is measured. Plural is feet.
• Unlike an inch for measuring distance, a poetic
foot measures both length in numbers of
syllables, and sound in stressed versus
unstressed vowel sounds. One foot can match
one single word, or it can span several words.
Types of Feet
(Adjectives Given to Metrical Line)
Types of Meter
• The number of feet in a given line
is marked as a form of the word meter.
Number of Feet in A Name of the Meter
Metrical Line
1 Monometer
2 Dimeter
3 Trimeter
4 Tetrameter
5 Pentameter
6 Hexameter
7 Heptameter
8 Octameter
Steps of Scansion
1. Syllabification
2. Accentuation
3. Determining Division of Feet
[Link] of Meter
5. Discovering Variations &
Substitutions
Ex: 1
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Ex: 1_Syllabification
Ex:1_Accentuation
Ex:1_Determining Division of Feet
Ex:1_Identification of Meter
Stress Pattern>> Iamb
5 Feet per line>>Pentameter
Therefore prosodic name>> Iambic pentameter
Ex: 2
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
Ex 2: Syllabification
Ex:2_Accentuation
Ex:2_Determining Division of Feet
Ex:2_Identification of Meter
Stress Pattern>> Trochee
3 Feet per line>>Trimeter
Therefore prosodic name>> Trochaic trimeter
Line Names of Variations
Ex:2_Discovering Variations
Prosodic name>> Trochaic trimeter
Variation>> 2nd & 4th lines are catalectic
Prosodic Report
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
The given lines are in trochaic trimeter
with the following variation.
The second and fourth lines are catalectic.
