Scansion and Text Analysis Scansion Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables and counting the syllables Thus when we describe the rhythm of a poem we scan the poem and mark the stresses and absenc ID: 311142
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Slide1
How Does He Write That Stuff?
Scansion and Text AnalysisSlide2
Scansion
Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables.
Thus, when we describe the rhythm of a poem, we “scan” the poem and mark the stresses (/) and absences of stress (^) and count the number of feet.Slide3
Why Scansion?
To scan a poem is to make a diagram of the stresses and absence of stress we find in it.
Studying
rhythms, “scanning,” is not just a way of pointing to syllables; it is also a matter of listening to a poem and making sense of it.
To
scan a poem is one way to indicate how to read it aloud; in order to see where stresses fall, you have to see the places where the poet wishes to put emphasis.
That
is why when scanning a poem you may find yourself suddenly understanding it.Slide4
Poetry terms
Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a
line.
Foot
: basic unit of verse composed of 1-4 syllables
M
eter
:
the number of feet in a line.Slide5
Iambic Pentameter
Shakespeare wrote in both prose and poetry.
When he wrote in poetry, he used one meter almost exclusively- iambic pentameter
What is Iambic Pentameter?
Iambic Pentameter has:
Ten syllables in each line
Five pairs of alternating unstressed
and
stressed
syllablesSlide6
How do we recognize it?
The rhythm in each line sounds like:
ba
-
BUM / ba
-
BUM
/
ba
-BUM
/
ba
-BUM / ba
-
BUM
Most of Shakespeare’s famous quotations fit into this rhythm.
For
example:
If
mu-
/ -sic
be
/ the
food
/ of
love
, / play
on
Is
this
/ a
dag-
/ -
ger
I
/ see
be-
/ fore
me?
Each pair of syllables is called an iambus. You’ll notice that each iambus is made up of one unstressed and one stressed beat (
ba
-
BUM
).Slide7
In everyday life, nobody speaks or writes in perfect iambic rhythm, except at moments: “a HAM on RYE and HIT the
MUStard
HARD!”
Poets
don’t even write in iambic very long, although when they do, they have chosen iambic because it is the rhythm that most closely resemble everyday speech. Slide8
Scan this Iambic Pentameter
You know that it would be untrue,You know that I would be a liar,
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.
Come on, baby, light my fire.
Try to set the night on fire.
--Jim Morrison, “Light My Fire”Slide9
Meters
Pentameter is one name for the number of feet in a line.
The
commonly used names for line lengths are
:monometer
one
foot
dimeter
two
feet
trimeter
three feet
tetrameter
four
feet
pentameter
five
feet
hexameter
six feetheptameter seven feetoctameter eight feetSlide10
Feminine Ending
In his plays, Shakespeare didn’t always stick to ten syllables. He often played around with iambic pentameter to give color and feeling to his character’s speeches. This is the key to understanding Shakespeare's language
.
Feminine
Ending
Sometimes Shakespeare added an extra unstressed beat at the end of a line to emphasize a character’s sense of contemplation. This variation is called a feminine ending and
Hamlet’s famous
question is the perfect example:
To
be
, / or
not
/ to be:
/
that
is / the
ques
-
/ -
tionSlide11
F.E. examples
He does confess he feels himself distracted
he DOES /
conFESS
/ he FEELS / himSELF /
disTRACTed
How all occasions do inform against me,
how ALL /
ocCA
/
sions
DO /
inFORM / aGAINST me
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.
the QUEEN /
caROUS
/
es
TO / thy FOR / tunes
HAMletSlide12
Other feet
Iambic(^/)
and
anapestic
(^^/)meters are called rising meters because their movement rises from unstressed syllable to
stressed
trochaic
(/^)
and
dactylic
(/^^)
meters are called falling.
In the twentieth century, the bouncing meters--anapestic and dactylic--have been used more often for comic verse than for serious poetry. Slide13
Spondee and Pyrrhic
Spondee
(//) and
pyrrhic
(^^) are called feet, even though they contain only one kind of stressed syllable.
They
are never used as the sole meter of a poem; if they were, it would be like the steady impact of nails being hammered into a board--no pleasure to hear or dance to.
But
inserted now and then, they can lend emphasis and variety to a
meter
Yeats- “
Who Goes With Fergus
?”
^ ^ / / ^ ^ / /
(^^//^^//)And the white breast of the dim sea,Slide14
More textual terms
InversionShakespeare also reverses the order of the stresses in some iambi to help emphasize certain words or ideas.
Occasionally
, Shakespeare will completely break the rules and place two stressed syllables
( a trochee) in
the same iambus, as the following quote from
Richard III
demonstrates:
Now
is / the
win- / -ter of /
our
dis
-
/ con
tent
The
fourth iambus emphasizes that it is “our discontent,” and the first iambus emphasizes that we are feeling this “now.”Slide15
The content of the line is the same, but something has changed — the weight of it is somehow different.
The
trochee breaks the rhythm and makes a particular word (and therefore a particular idea that the word expresses) stand
out.
It's
important to remember that the point of all of this is to discover Shakespeare's acting notes from beyond the grave
When
you notice a trochee, you explore the changed and deepened meaning that comes with shifting the pattern of emphasis.Slide16
Contractions
Contractions have been around as long as language has existed. Some of Shakespeare's contractions are familiar
to
the modern ear, and some aren't.
You
can see both the familiar and the unfamiliar in
Cloten's
observation, "It' almost morning,
is't
not?" (
Cymbeline
2.3.9).
Is't is a common contraction for
is it
.
Many
contractions, including the following, are the same as those we use today:
"
I'll be a brave judge!" (
1 Henry IV
1.2.62).
"I'm not their father" (
Cymbeline 4.2.28). Slide17
Contracting vowels
To make his verses come out right, with the correct number of syllables, Shakespeare also contracted some vowels and ran words together.
For
example, the other; with three syllables, becomes
th
'other; with only two.
A word
that has a final syllable of
est
can also be contracted, as in thou knows, for thou
knowest
.
Shakespeare used contractions anywhere he needed to adjust the number of syllables, or just to make a line sound better. Slide18
Contracting vowels
He often used the following contractions, but they have since fallen into disuse:
't—it
'tis--it is
o'er—overe'er
—ever
ne'er--neverSlide19
Elision
Elision- As in modern English, words often appear in a reduced or
elided
form, with the omitted element shown by an apostrophe.
The reason for the elision varies: in some cases it enables a word to fit the metrical character of a line or focuses the emphasis within a sentence more
sharply
In
others it helps to capture the colloquial character of conversational speech or identifies a character’s idiosyncratic way of talking.Slide20
have
> ha’
Will
you ha’ the truth
on’t?shall
> s
’
thou’s
hear our counsel
wilt
> ’t,
’lt
an
thou’lt
mouth, / I’ll rant as well as
thouwouldst
thou
>
woo’t
Woo’t
weep?Slide21
Antithesis
To be or not to be
You've heard it so many times that you may have forgotten to listen to the significance of these words.
In
these six words Shakespeare gives us two complete opposites: existing and not existing.
This
use of a word (or sentence) being placed against another to form a balanced contrast is known in rhetoric as ANTITHESIS.