Study guide: Poetic Structure and Meter

📋 Course Outline

1. Poem Structure and Stanza Names
2. Types of Metrical Feet
3. Counting Feet and Naming Meter
4. Metrical Variations and Line Endings
5. Other Verse Forms and Scansion

📖 1. Poem Structure and Stanza Names

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Stanza: a group of lines in a poem
• Foot: a group of syllables that forms the rhythm of a line

📝 Essential Points

📌 Syllables can be stressed or unstressed, meaning respectively accentuated or non-accentuated.

• Stanzas are named according to their number of lines:

  • couplet = 2
  • tercet = 3
  • quatrain = 4
  • cinquain = 5
  • sestet = 6
  • septet = 7
  • octet = 8

• A sonnet contains 14 lines.

💡 Memory Hook

Poem → stanza → line → foot → syllables

📖 2. Types of Metrical Feet

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Iamb: one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable, represented as ˘ /
• Trochee: one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable, represented as / ˘

★ Must-know

• An anapest contains two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable, represented as ˘ ˘ /, as in underSTAND and contraDICT.

• A dactyl contains one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, represented as / ˘ ˘, as in CArefully and HORrible.

Further detail

• A spondee contains two stressed syllables, represented as / /, as in FOOTball and CHILDhood.

• A pyrrhic contains two unstressed syllables, represented as ˘ ˘.

💡 Memory Hook

Iamb rises ˘ /, while trochee falls / ˘

📖 3. Counting Feet and Naming Meter

📝 Essential Points

📌 A meter is named by combining the type of foot with the number of feet.

• The number of feet determines the line’s name:

  • 1 = monometer
  • 2 = dimeter
  • 3 = trimeter
  • 4 = tetrameter
  • 5 = pentameter
  • 6 = hexameter / Alexandrine
  • 7 = heptameter
  • 8 = octameter

• A line containing iambs and five feet is called iambic pentameter.

💡 Memory Hook

Identify the foot, count the feet, then name the meter

📖 4. Metrical Variations and Line Endings

★ Must-know

📌 An end-stopped line ends its meaning or sentence at the end of the line, whereas enjambment continues the sentence into the next line.

Further detail

• Anacrusis is one or more unstressed syllables added at the beginning of a line.

• Hypercatalepsis or hypercatalexis is one or more unstressed syllables added at the end of a line.

• Acephaly is one or more unstressed syllables missing at the beginning of a line, while catalexis is one or more unstressed syllables missing at the end.

💡 Memory Hook

End-stopped lines finish the sense; enjambment carries it forward

📖 5. Other Verse Forms and Scansion

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Counterpointing: an opposition between different levels of rhythm or accentuation

★ Must-know

📌 Wrenched accent is an accentuation that does not correspond to the expected metrical pattern, while inversion is a temporary reversal of the usual rhythm, such as an iambic structure becoming trochaic.

• Scansion consists of identifying stressed and unstressed syllables, identifying the foot, counting the feet, and assigning the name of the meter.

Further detail

• Free verse is verse without a regular fixed meter.

• Blank verse is verse without rhyme.

• Syllabic verse is organized mainly according to the number of syllables.

💡 Memory Hook

Stress → foot → feet → meter

📊 Synthesis Tables

Metrical Feet