1/17/2023 0 Comments Scansion example![]() ![]() The person doing the scanning already knows. That'sīecause it does little more than reveal the underlying meter, which presumably Is that it doesn't reveal much about the poem being scanned. (i.e., scansion which reflects the base meter as much as possible). Mindset that has resulted in this type of "meter-based" scansion, as I Poet can pretend to eliminate them – and that is my best guess as to the If they can't be eliminated, then at least a English being what it is, trochees, pyrrhics and spondees (less Such an atmosphere, variant feet would certainly be suspect, and a conservative Over-reaching in their effort to re-establish the metrical tradition. Perhaps as a reaction to a century of formless free verse, I believe that some poets are ![]() Mentally scan our own poems as we write them. So if the line can't reasonably be read that way, what is the point of scanning it that way? More specifically,Īt least two uses: We use it to study the poetry of other poets, and we also In fact, I doubt that any person couldĪctually read it that way without making a concerted effort to do so. The resulting line lacksĭrama and sounds monotonous. Stress on "on" sounds amateurish and unnatural. Removing the stress from "last" removes the impact of those To actually read the line like that would ruin it. To me, that is an artificial scansion that doesn't reflect the THAT'S my / last DUCH / ess PAINT / ed ON / the WALL Is variant, for a total of 20% variant feet. "smoothed out" to conform with the meter, the line then has only one foot which Stress than any of the unstressed syllables in the line and should therefore be (the idea being that only one syllable in a foot should receive a stress). The word "last" can be spoken with slightly less stress than "duch"Īnd therefore, some would say, should be represented as an unstressed syllable Reading the scansion that the syllable receives more stress than itĬontains yet another foot which is a source of controversy, the second foot. Slightly stressed syllable to a stressed position suggests to anyone who is Some readers may indeed read it that way. – that's because it can be given a slight stress without sounding awkward, and In theįourth foot, the word "on" can take what Jerome called a "theoretical stress" But here is where the controversy begins. ![]() That line has 60% variant feet (other lines in the poemĪre more regular). Have chosen to use capital letters because they are more visually compelling.) (Note: There are other ways of representing stress than using capital letters, such as using bolded text or accent symbols, but I Trochee / spondee / iamb / pyrrhic / iamb THAT'S my / LAST DUCH / ess PAINT / ed on / the WALL That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Line of "My Last Duchess", would be scanned as follows: ![]() In scansion, whereas words that receive no stress or a slight stress are Words that receive a strong or moderate stress when spoken are stressed Poetry bulletin board at the Able Muse site, which I These issues became the source of many arguments on Today's formalist poets consider anything more than about 20% of variant feet to Meters an iamb is "da DUM".) However, I quickly learned that many of Who don't know, around 90% of all metered English poetry is written in iambic The canon of great literature is composed of variant feet, primarily trochees (DUM da),Īnapests (da da DUM), pyrrhics (da da), and spondees (DUM DUM). Jerome, who made poetry his life-long study and career, estimated that I didn't consider scansion to be an area of controversy until I started this site andīecame acquainted with various formalist poets. The method that Jerome taught is one that I have seen mentioned in many books and articles, and I came to accept it as the standard method of scansion,Īnd I still believe that it is the standard method. (Actually, I first learned about them in grade school, but promptly forgot.) And scansion in the early 1980's, primarily from the books of Judson Jerome. ![]()
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