Poetry as a literary genre Rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton © 2012

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 1. Rhythm Rhythm is generally referred to the pace, speed of a poem. While the Italian language is syllable-timed, English is stress-timed. Stress is much more important to rhythm than syllables. In Latin poetry metre depends upon ‘quantity’, that is the alternation of long and short syllables. The long and short syllables in Latin metres were translated as stressed and unstressed syllables in English.

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 2. Metre An important part of the rhythm is metre, which is the ‘beat’ of a poem, that is the distribution within the line of stressed and unstressed syllables. Lines of poetry in Latin were divided into feet, with different names according to the arrangement of syllables. A foot is a group of two syllables.

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 2. Metre Adapted into English, the long syllables became the stressed syllables, marked with a ‘¯’, and the short syllables became unstressed syllables, marked with a ‘˘’: ‘And makes’ is a segment, or foot, which contains an unstressed syllable (˘), and a stressed syllable (¯).

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 3. Words Articles, auxiliaries, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns are usually unstressed words. Grammatical words unstressed Content words stressed Adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs are usually stressed words.

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 4. Types of feet Two types of feet Stressed and unstressed syllables inside a word or a line can combine into different patterns unstress-stress stress-unstress the unstress-stress pattern (˘/¯) is called iamb and it is the most common foot in English poetry. the stress-unstress pattern (¯/˘) is called trochee.

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 4. Types of feet For many centuries the iambic foot, particularly the iambic pentameter (generally corresponding to ten syllables), has been the most common metre in English poetry. Example: Will I / with wine / and was / sails so / convince (W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1)

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 5. Blank verse A common form based on iambic pentameter is blank verse. The use of blank verse achieves extreme flexibility, almost giving poetry the quality of everyday speech. This is why it is often found in Elizabethan drama, for example in Macbeth by Shakespeare. blanklines are unrhymed

Poetry as a literary genre: rhythm in poetry Performer - Culture & Literature 6. Analyse rhythm How to analyse rhythm in a poetic text? Here are some tips that may be useful when you deal with rhythm in the analysis of a poem: 1. write the stress on the syllables; 2. count the number of syllables in each line; 3. write the slant bars (/) in order to recognise the feet; 4. identify the pattern (iambic or trochaic).