Talk:Iambic pentameter

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[edit] Notation for scansion

Isn't there a way to get proper scansion marks to indicate stress? Otherwise we'll never have good examples for prosody and versification. --Dmerrill

Maybe something of this sort:

 v   -    v    -    v     -      v   -  v     - 
Was this the face that launch'd  a thousand ships

That's quite close to the "normal" way of marking it. It also leaves places for all sorts of dashes. --Uriyan

I like it. Indeed, it's the way I do it for class handouts! --MichaelTinkler
I get it know,but still confused what iambic pentameter mean give me more specific example--unknown
How about ...
Shǎll Í cǒmpáre thěe tó ǎ súmměr's dáy?
or
Shǎll Ī cǒmpāre thěe tō a sūmměr's dāy?
Unfortunately, not ideal in this font. — Stumps 15:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
It seems the only other way to ensure alignment of stress marks with syllables is to use tables ... something like this:
x
/
x
/
x
/
x
/
x
/
To swell the gourd, and plump the ha- zel shells
I've started introducing this to the article. We can see how it looks when there are a few examples. — Stumps 20:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I like the table look, but I have two reservations: 1. I've never seen "x"'s used for unstressed syllables before, and it strikes me as a potentially confusing mark because I think of X as in "X" marks the spot as meaning, hit here, when of course it means just the opposite.
I have started an article — Systems of Scansion — where we can explain the notations. I had thought / and x was fairly common. I like it because it leaves the classical notation still free for marking quantity, so you can actually use both simultaneously without confusion. I will try to extend the survey in Systems of Scansion so that we can get a good overview of what really is commonly used, and also gives us the opportunity to examine the merits of the various documented schemes. — Stumps 04:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
2. If we have to add the <center>x</center> around each mark, it will get tedious indeed -- I'd recommend we do the following instead:
x / x / x /
An eas ier sort of code

.

I would propose we might just use "DA|DUM" instead of attempting marks, as they're instantly understood and easy to type (the marks that I learned to use for scansion are not easy to type (a u-like thing and a macron, more or less).
I prefer marks because they are easy to read simultaneously with the text of an example. DA|DUM requires two passes over the text I think. The difficulty of typing the various symbols can be overcome by copying and pasting, but it seems there are also probalems DISPLAYING some of the symbols ... for example, some of these pages look ok when I use Firefox, but have blanked out special characters on the same computer when I use Internet Explorer. — Stumps 04:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I just converted the Donne example to the table style. In doing so, I realized the key problem with the table notation we have here is that feet don't line up. I might prefer using monospaced fonts a la the following:

|  /   x   |  x   /   |   x    /   |   x    /    |  x    /   |
| Batter   | my heart | three per- | soned God   | for  you  |
|  x   /   |  x     / |   /     /  |  x    /     |  x     /  |
| as  yet  | but knock|breath shine| and seek    | to    mend|
|   x  /   |   x   /  |  x    /    |  x     /    | x  x   /  |
| That I   | may rise | and stand  | o'erthrow   |me and bend|
|  x    /  |  x   /   |  /     /   |  x   /      |  x  /     |
|Your force| to break | blow burn  | and make    | me new    |

That allows editing to happen more easily and allow us to line up feet in a row -- in the above, for example, it's easier to see the rhythmic parallel between lines 2 and 4 than it is in the version currently in the article. Tom

Wow! A great job. I've made a few adjustments to the 'tabulation' of the Donne example in the article ... it now looks like this:

/
x
x
/
x
/
x
/
x
/
Bat- ter | my heart | three- per- | soned God, | for you |
x
/
x
/
/
/
x
/
x
/
as yet | but knock, | breathe, shine | and seek | to mend. |
x
/
x
/
x
/
/
/
x
x
/
That I | may rise | and stand | o'er throw | me and bend |
x
/
x
/
/
/
x
/
x
/
Your force | to break, | blow, burn | and make | me new. |

The changes being simply:

  • making each line its own table
  • allowing a 'cell' for the | mark

At this stage I haven't attempted to put the feet in columns ... getting things to line up vertically, as this is - I think - not the usual approach in texts on the subject. It gets tricky when poets start adding extra syllables or dropping them out. Also, of course, in the one column you could have a syllable that is spelled short and in another row one splled long ... in this example there is an 'I' and a 'force' in the second column ... and this can make the alignment look a bit strange. Here is one attempt at trying to get it into columns. I think I prefer the above version where each line has its own length.

/
x
x
/
x
/
x
/
x
/
Bat- ter | my heart | three- per- | soned God, | for you |
x
/
x
/
/
/
x
/
x
/
as yet | but knock, | breathe, shine | and seek | to mend. |
x
/
x
/
x
/
/
/
x x
/
That I | may rise | and stand | o'er throw | me and bend |
x
/
x
/
/
/
x
/
x
/
Your force | to break, | blow, burn | and make | me new. |

all for now ... Stumps 21:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

"Many feel the success of iambic pentameters is related to its sounding like a human heartbeat at rest."

This strikes me as rather absurd. I'd like to delete it unless someone feels strongly that this is true and can point me to some of the "many" who say so. Tom 18:27, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I went ahead and deleted it. Tom
Personally I feel that the success of iambic pentameter is do to the fact that it sounds very much like natural speaking in many ways.AbsintheMinded

I have a question: How on earth do you tell if single syllable words "I, He, She, Cat, Be...." Are stressed/Unstressed? The only thing I know for fact is stressed is "A"; and writing multiple syllable lines is driving me nuts!

Two ways: 1. you read them aloud and see what they sound like. 2. You look at the underlying rhythm of the line. If you're in the midst of iambic pentameter, then you're likely to feel a word as unstressed or stressed based on the iambic pattern that's been established. One syllable words have some flexibility, in other words, whereas words like "present", which change meaning based on the stress, obviously can only be read in one way (depending on the meaning you want of course).

It would seem to me that the stress on single syllable words depends on the other words they are used in conjunction with, but I'm just a science teacher! Also, the success of iambic pentameter is paralleled in the success of musical rhythms like the shuffle. Clearly this is a pleasing rhythm for humans since it shows up so often. As to why we like it so much, who knows? (it could be our heartbeats!) The ultimate aspect of any spoken form is how easily it flows from the mouth and I would agree that IP does feel quite natural.

[edit] removed example

DUM-da da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
(STRONG weak / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG)
Shall I com - PARE thee TO a SUM mer's DAY
Which is an alternate reading of the first line. Whereas, the iambic pentameter of the third line is more stict:
(weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG)
Rough winds do shake the darl -ing buds of May

I removed the above from the article for the following reasons.

  1. It interrupted the flow of the body -- there was already an example of trochaic inversion coming up in the next sentence (the Donne example).
  2. This is a poor example of trochaic inversion, since the line is almost always read as an iamb. Furthermore, if we're going to allow for variants of the line, there's a third possible variant -- a spondee. On the other hand, the example already in the text was unambiguous: if you read "Batter my heart three personed God", there's no question that "Batter" is a troche.
  3. "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" is not a good example of strict iambic pentameter, since the reader is likely to ask why "Rough" couldn't be stressed (for this reason, two syllable words make better examples). If I were putting this back I would pick the 4th line -- "And summer's lease hath all too short a date" as a good example of "strict" pentameter, since all the unstressed one-syllable words are clearly unstressed ("And","hath","too","a").

Tom

[edit] What to call an inversion

I see that a while back the article used the phrase 'iambic inversion' and this was changed to 'trochaic inversion'. I think both terms are potentially confusing. If we are talking about iambic pentameter, then I think it is perfectly clear what the simple term inversion refers to. It is also simpler to say 'the inversion of the second foot is relatively rare' rather than 'the trochaic inversion of the second foot ...'. I recommend changing the text of the article to simply talk of 'inversions' (we can of course leave the useful references to trochees). Any passionate objections to this? — Stumps 10:55, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I used trochaic inversion (and renamed it trochaic inversion) because it's the term I heard in school. I then confirmed my hunch by doing a search for the term on google (as well as for the "iambic inversion" variant), whose results seemed to confirm that "trochaic inversion" was a common thing to call it. Tom

[edit] dum da dum da dum

is dum the proper term? it gets the point across but it just seems as if there should be some indication of the notation, as dum sounds kinda dumb. User:Kaldosh 05:56, 1 May 2006

the da DUM da DUM stuff has been in the article for a long time ... it may have first got there because we hadn't settled on a good way to mark scansion ... anyhow, as you say, it gets the point across, and I think this is important ... judging from some of the intermittent vadalism the page seems to be visited by school-kids fairly often so it is probably important to have some fairly clear and straightforward explanation at the outset, and move gently into more technical territory. Having said that, I do think that the page could do with some tidying up, and we could possibly do without the big block of da DUM da DUMs explaining the rhythms of the lines from Donne's sonnet. I just haven't got around to reworking that bit yet. — Stumps 10:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] THAT is the QUEStion?

I'd say the example from Hamlet given in the article has doubtful scansion. It's a fine example of a weak ending, but I think many actors would be just as likely to retain the stress on "is" and not on "that" in "that is the question".

Also, the deleted note about the human heartbeat is perhaps not the most sensical when looking at the text from a literary point of view, but many acting and voice instructors use this analogy (Kristin Linklater, to name one). It has relevance in the theatrical side of iambic pentameter; perhaps just having it as a stand-alone statement doesn't fit so well.

I think in general there should be more attention given to the interpretation of iambic pentameter in dramatic text, because the stress is often not just a matter of where we would naturally put the stress when speaking (and that's in our present-day voices), but can take into account the content of the rest of the speech. I'm not suggesting that actors get to mix and match however they like, but most of Shakespeare's speeches contain syllables that demand an artistic choice one way or another, and the choice affects character.

[edit] Why does this article now contain nothing but a long discussion of Pythagoras?

Just asking. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.105.210.72 (talk) 00:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

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