LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

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LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

• BBI 3207

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Metre and Rhythm

• In order to understand English metre, it is first
  necessary to understand the two aspects of
  English words that are controlled by metres
• syllables,
• relative stress on syllables.
• Syllables can be thought of as beats in speech,
  e.g. umbrellas three beats
• In English, a syllable is usually based around a
  vowel or diphthong (two vowels spoken together)
  or triphthong (three together), which is called
  the nucleus of the syllable.

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• Monosyllables
• 1 syllable in, up, man, heart, score, feet,
  words, smelt, death, wheat
• Polysyllables
• 2 syllables ready, pieces, upset, apple,
  without, ending, fearsome
• 3 syllables readiness, undertake, manicure,
  randomness
• 4 syllables monstrosity, repulsiveness,
  menagerie, telescopic
• 5 syllables unreality, fortification,
  structuralism, nationality
• 6 syllables encyclopaedia, psychotherapeutic
• 7 syllables environmentalism, autobiographical

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Organise the following sentences into syllables

• The rain is raining all around
• It falls on field and tree,
• It rains on the umbrellas here,
• And on the ships at sea.
• (Robert Louis Stevenson, Rain)

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(No Transcript)
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Stress on syllables

• Some syllables carry greater stress than others
• The syllable with greater stress is experienced
  as more prominent (e.g. louder).
• In dictionaries of English the syllable with
  greatest stress relative to other syllables has
  an inverted comma put before it in its
  representation of pronunciation
• e. g. ready, readiness, monstrosity,
  unreality, encyclopaedia, environmentalism.

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Stress on syllables

• Stress is also manifested as higher pitch and
  greater length, and these may also be audible on
  the stressed syllables in addition to greater
  loudness.
• Syllables with very weak or no stress are often
  reduced in vowel quality such that they are no
  longer clearly distinguishable from other vowels
  and may also be shortened.

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Underline the stressed syllables
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Underline the stressed syllables
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Rhythm

• The regular periodic beat.
• a unit which is usually larger than the
  syllable, and which contains one stressed
  syllable, marking the recurrent beat, and
  optionally, a number of unstressed syllables
  (Leech (1969) 105).
• It may involve a succession of weak and strong
  stress long and short high and low and other
  contrasting segments of utterance. Rhythm can
  occur in prose as well as in verse.

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Meter (Rhythm)

• A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed
  syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in
  a repeating pattern.
• When poets write in meter, they count out the
  number of stressed (strong) syllables and
  unstressed (weak) syllables for each line.
• A measurable, patterned unit (a set) of poetic
  rhythm is called a foot.

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Meter

• Meter is a type of rhythm of accented and
  unaccented syllables organized into feet, aka
  patterns.
• It is determined by the character and number of
  syllables in a line. Meter is also dependent on
  the way the syllables are accented.
• Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
• (Shakespeares Sonnet 18)
• The above line consists of ten syllables that
  show a pattern of unstressed and stressed
  syllables 1st syllable unstressed, 2nd syllable
  stressed, 3rd syllable unstressed. 10th
  syllable. The unstressed syllable is underlined
  while the stressed syllable is in bold (Cumming
  2006).

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Foot stress patterning

• A foot is made up of a pair of unstressed and
  stressed syllables. Thus, the above line
  altogether contains five feet (see below)
•     1              2              
  3              4              5 Shall
  I.... compare .. thee to.... a sum.... mers
  day?

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Stress patterning

• Iamb 2 syllables, unstressed stressed
• Trochee 2 syllables, stressed unstressed
• Anapest 3 syllables, 2 unstressed stressed
• Dactyl 3 syllables, stressed 2 unstressed
• Spondee 2 stressed syllables
• Pyrrhic 2 unstressed syllables

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5 types of Feet
Iamb (Iambic) Unstressed Stressed Two Syllables "To be or not to be" (Shakespeares Hamlet)
Trochee (Trochaic) Stressed Unstressed Two Syllables "Double, double, toil and trouble." (Shakespeares Macbeth)
Spondee (Spondaic) Stressed Stressed Two Syllables heartbreak
Anapest (Anapestic) Unstressed Unstressed Stressed Three Syllables "I arise and unbuild it again" (Shelley's Cloud)
Dactyl (Dactylic Stressed Unstressed Unstressed Three Syllables Openly
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Basic Foot Rhythms

• Name Iambic Pattern unstressed, stressed
  (U/)        
• U / U / U /
  U / U /
• But soft, what light through yonder window
  breaks?
• Name Trochaic Pattern stressed, unstressed (/
  U) 
• / U / U / U / U
       
• Double, double toil and trouble 
• Name Anapestic Pattern unstressed, unstressed,
  stressed (U U /) 
• U U /   U U / U U
  /  
• And the sound of a voice that is still
• Name Dactylic Pattern stressed, unstressed,
  unstressed (/ U U)
• / U U / U U       
• Take her up tenderly

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Metrical patterning

• Dimetre 2 feet
• Trimetre 3 feet
• Tetrametre 4 feet
• Pentametre 5 feet
• Hexametre 6 feet
• Heptametre 7 feet
• Octametre 8 feet

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Meter depends on the type of foot and the number
of feet in a line. Below are the types of meter
and the line length
Monometer One Foot
Dimeter Two Feet
Trimeter Three Feet
Tetrameter Four Feet
Pentameter Five Feet
Hexameter Six Feet
Heptameter Seven Feet
Octameter Eight Feet
    1              2              
3              4              5 Shall
I.... compare .. thee to.... a sum.... mers
day?
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Line Length

• One foot Monometer
• Two feet Dimeter
• Three feet Trimeter
• Four feet Tetrameter

Five feet Pentameter Six feet Hexameter Seven
feet Heptameter Eight feet Octameter
U / U / U
/ U / U / But
soft, what light through yon der win dow
breaks? 1 2
3 4 5 5 feet
Pentameter Therefore, this line is iambic
pentameter U U /   U U /
U U /  And the sound of a voice
that is still 1 2
33 feet TrimeterTherefore, this
line is Anapestic Trimeter
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Practice

• Here's an example of how a line by Shakespeare is
  divided into feet
• from FAIR est CREA tures WE deSIRE
  inCREASE

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Trochaic Foot Two syllables, initial is head
(Christina Rossetti, In the bleak mid-winter,
1872)
The bracketed asterisk is now the initial
asterisk in each foot This is the head, the
syllable most likely to be stressed
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• In these lines we see something new a foot at
  one end of the line contains one syllable when it
  might be expected to contain two.
• This is called catalexis it is one of the
  permitted variations in English, where a foot can
  be short at one end of the line.
• In trochaic metres the short foot comes at the
  end of the line (in iambic metres it comes at the
  beginning).

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Anapaestic Foot Three syllables, final is head

• These are three-syllable feet in which the final
  syllable tends to be stressed - The stressed
  syllables tend to be three syllables apart
• Three-syllable feet (triplets) with a final head
  are anapaests, so this is in an anapaestic metre
  (actually anapaestic tetrameter because there are
  four anapaestic feet in each line).

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Anapaestic Foot Three syllables, final is head

• Note that the initial foot in the line is
  sometimes one syllable, sometimes two and
  sometimes three, thus showing different
  possibilities for catalexis, which thus permits
  variation between lines.
• Metres are rigid systems that nevertheless open
  up various loopholes for variation (in length
  or rhythm) in this way.

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Anapaestic Foot Three syllables, final is head

• While there is a general tendency for the head of
  the foot to be stressed, other syllables can
  sometimes be stressed as well, as every in the
  second line shows.

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Dactylitic Foot Three syllables, initial is head

• In these lines, which are in dactylic dimeter
  (two dactylic feet in each line), the final foot
  in the line sometimes falls short.
• We can tell that these are dactyls, first because
  the stressed syllables tend to fall three
  syllables apart, and second because the stressed
  syllable comes first.

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Determine the metre (type of foot and number of
feet) for the following lines

• The rain is raining all around
• It falls on field and tree,
• It rains on the umbrellas here,
• And on the ships at sea.

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Determine the metre (type of foot and number of
feet) for the following lines

• The rain is raining all around
• It falls on field and tree,
• It rains on the umbrellas here,
• And on the ships at sea.

iambic tetrameter iambic trimeter iambic
tetrameter iambic trimeter
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