Scansion Notes & Practice | AP Literature Class Website. If you want any additional help regarding scansion (especially for those absent), come see me during my planning block (4th period) or immediately after school. The quiz on scansion will be next week sometime (I’ll figure out the date near the end of this week). It’ll be the same format as the practice, only a different order. You’ll still need to label all the syllables, divide the feet of the lines, and identify the meter of each line. Basic Types of Metrical Feet foot = one accented syllable, plus 1 or 2 unaccented syllables ˘ = breve, which means an unstressed syllable ´ = ictus, which is a stressed syllable Examples Name of foot Sound to-day, the sun iamb dah-DEE dai-ly, went to trochee DEE-dah in-ter-vene, in the dark anapest dah-dah-DEE mul-ti-ple, col-or of dactyl DEE-dah-dah true-blue spondee (rare) DEE pyhrric dah # of feet term 1 monometer 2 dimeter 3 trimeter 4 tetrameter 5 pentameter 6 hexameter 7 heptameter 8 octameter Scansion: the process of scanning a poem for its metrical form. 1. 2. 3.
For Better for Verse | An interactive learning tool that can help you understand what makes metered poetry in English tick. Meter Quizzes: Take a Meter Quiz. Poetry Quizzes: Take a Poetry Quiz. Elements of poetry quiz 4. Interactive Quiz on Meter. Seamus Cooney, English Test your grasp of terms and your ability to identify meters by name. It's worth pointing out that what you're learning here is merely a bit of terminology or jargon and the ability to apply it accurately. Naming meters is not the same as being sensitive to effects of rhythm in poems.
Good readers who can hear what they're reading will respond to the poet's effects even if they lack the terms to name them. Do this quiz often enough so you gain confidence. You can also, to test your memory, see this quiz without suggested answers. Memorize Coleridge's mnemonic lines to help you with the names of the feet.
Trochee trips from long to short. "Long" and "short" are terms drawn from the metrics of Latin quantitative verse. In what follows, the diagonal slash marks a strongly stressed syllable, the hyphen a relatively weakly stressed syllable (relative, that is, to the adjacent syllables). Click on your preferred answer and you'll find out if it's right. Poem Scansion Quiz. Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion Made Easy. Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion Made Easy I created this page as a quick reference for my students when studying rhythm. The sources I cited below were very helpful, especially X.J. Kennedy's book. rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.meter: the number of feet in a line.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. In English, the major feet are: Iambic and anapestic meters are called rising meters because their movement rises from unstressed syllable to stressed; trochaic and dactylic meters are called falling. Spondee and pyrrhic are called feet, even though they contain only one kind of stressed syllable. A frequently heard metrical description is iambic pentameter: a line of five iambs. Answers.