Iambic pentameter

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Peter Lewis Groves (Monash University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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An ictothetic metre consisting of ten syllable-positions, which may divided into five segments or ‘feet', each prototypically carrying a beat on the second syllable:

Her eyes|, her hair|, her cheek|, her gait|, her voice|.

There are two basic ways of varying this scheme: metrical variation (reversal, swap, coda) varies the pattern itself, and prosodic variation varies the way the patterns are represented in the syllables of English. In terms of metrical variation we may reverse the order of beat and offbeat in a foot, making the beat come first; any such reversal <…

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321 words

Citation: Groves, Peter Lewis. "Iambic pentameter". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 June 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5524, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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Iambic pentameter

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