Literature
Spondee
A spondee is a metrical foot in poetry consisting of two stressed syllables. It is often used to create a sense of emphasis or weight in a line of verse. Spondees can be found in various forms of poetry and are used to create rhythm and impact in the language.
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4 Key excerpts on "Spondee"
eBook - PDF- Rhian Williams(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
Emily Dickinson (1890 [c. 1861]), ‘There’s a certain Slant of light’, ll. 1–8. Contentious English feet Spondee A two-syllable foot, both stressed. Example word: football. Some insist that Spondees cannot exist in English, partly because a foot should only contain one stress and partly because it is impossible for two successive stresses to be even. Examples are therefore usually compound words, such as the one given here, and many would still suggest that ‘football’ is truly a trochee The Poetry Toolkit 154 ( foot ball). For these reasons, Spondees cannot be sustained for a whole line, but are contextual feet: that is, they gain a double stress only when seen in context with the whole of the metrical line. They tend to add special emphasis, partly by doubling the stress, but also by causing a sudden disruption in a lilting line. The appearance of an equally stressed foot is an arresting feature, causing the reader to slow down, or even to alter their breathing pattern completely. Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnet’ is written predominantly in iambic rhythm, but the central Spondees (asterisked) perform the battering that the speaker demands while also conveying the tense over-breathing that characterizes his desire: Batter my heart three personed God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, and bend Your force, to break blow, burn and make me new. [ Batt er] [my heart ] [three per ] [soned God ;] [for, you ] [As yet ] [but knocke ,] [* breathe, shine ,] [and seeke ] [to mend ;] [That I ] [may rise ,] [and stand ,] [o’er-throw mee,] [and bend ] [Your force ,] [to break ] [* blow, burn ] [and make ] [me new .] John Donne, ‘Holy Sonnet: XIV’ (1633), ll. 1–4. See also Sapphic stanzas , which specify a Spondee in their final lines. Pyrrhic A two-syllable foot, both unstressed. It is not really possible to give an example word for the pyrrhic.
eBook - PDF- Seymour Chatman(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Although I have heard this read in a number of ways, including Rocks, ° av e s , lakes, fe n s , bogs, de n s , and s h a d e s o f ' ^ h , the melancholy and somber atmosphere which the list is designed to convey suggests a performance more like R °c ks> ° a Ve s> la ke s> fe ns> b 0&> d ^ a n d shades o f ^ in which the first three feet are clearly Spondees. Spondaic variation, of course, need not occur in a foot which is divided by a caesura; and in any case, it is not the caesura which causes the Spondee, but rather the weight of the syllables themselves. How may we preserve these possibilities in our metrical analysis without sacrificing the criterion of simplicity? We could classify Spondee not as a separate foot but rather as a subclass of iambus or trochee, whichever the prevailing mode, 36 graphically, | --| = | ^ -| 36 This is the opinion of Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 594, who claim that it is impossible to pronounce any two successive syllables in English without some rise or fall of stress - and some rise or fall of stress is all that is needed for a THE COMPONENTS OF ENGLISH METER 145 or | -v |; or we might not use the combination | — | at all, but simply include in our definition of ^ all levels of unprominence up to and including equal prominence. The analysis V_/ — - _ t^j Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death then would be said to include both scansions discussed above. But such a system seems not only uninformative but actually misleading. Consider again the line Above his e | quals. Fare | well hap | py fields. If we were to mark the second foot | -quals Fare- | and the third | -well hap- | we would be suggesting that the metrical relations of the two syllables in farewell have precisely reversed their normal linguistic stress disposition. 37 The metrical analysis of syllables which may be either ictic or non-ictic is best shown by double marks: w — — w — v — ^ — Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
eBook - PDF- Donald Freeman(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
This can only in part be explained historical ly by reference to the model of the 'double trochee' of Italian Renaissance poetry. It also seems that the distribu tion of Spondees is rather similar to that of trochees just described. The preference fo r even feet, and fo r the beginning of the line, would thus hold fo r the applic ation of M R2a, rather than fo r any specific foot type. If so, then we may conjecture tha t these facts basically reflect two general principles of poetic form which in one way or another impinge on the poetry of nearly all languages: (a) A tendency toward dipodic structure. The second and fourth feet are strong -as opposed to the first, third and fi fth, which a re weak. This higher-leve l pat tern is super-imposed on the pattern of alternating syllab le strength. Thus the very common line type (32) For the j(JUr wind1· blow in from every coast l wi! lfeedfat the ancient grudge I bear him (MY 1 .2 . 1 68) (MY 1 .3 .48) begins with a kind of 'super-iamb ' made up of the first (weak) and second (strong) foot. (b) A tendency to reduce metrical tension toward the end of a line. This itself is of course only a special case of the principle of closure, insightful ly examin ed by Smith ( 1 968). 2.4. Some apparent counter-evidence. The above conclusions dep end on an assessment of the metrical evidence which recognizes the commonplace that some disyllabic and polysyllabic words were accented differently in Shakespeare's time than they a re today. Obviously, Shakespeare's meter must be det ermined on the basis of what, to the best of our knowledge. was Shakespeare's pronunciation. This must be established by a careful analysis of the philo logica l evidence fo r each word. For example. the fourth foot of the line 246 Essays in Modem St distics (33) He in the worst sense con strues their denial (Luc. 324) has a stress ed syllab le in odd position.
Further more, two people with a similar accent are perfectly capable of disagreeing over the due emphasis which should be placed upon individual words within a given line of poetry. The underlying problem here is that we 74 Poetry expect to find metrical analysis, with its pseudo-scientific jargon, to be an exact science.And it’s not.While it is unlikely that one can generate the same number of metrical accounts of a given line of poetry as the number of readings which critical ingenuity can provide for the meaning of a literary work, it is perfectly possible to generate two – and sometimes more – equally plausible metrical accounts of a line of verse. A contentious line from Paradise Lost will not be interpreted prosodologically from as wide a range of positions as, say, the debates over the significance of Satan in the poem; however, critics can, and do, quarrel over the way in which a particular line can be scanned. Prosodological analysis of metre, like so much else in literary criticism, is to a certain extent a matter of opinion. Metre gestures towards objective scientific analysis but remains an art with a significant degree of subjectivity within it. 4.2 the key metrical units The core terms in the study of metre are syllable , foot and stress . A syllable is a word, or portion of a word, made by a single effort of the organs of speech. It either forms a word or is an element of a longer word; thus, in the previous sentence, ‘a’, ‘is’, ‘word’ are examples of single-syllable words (monosyllables), whilst the two-syllable words ‘portion’, ‘single’ and ‘organs’ are disyllabic and ‘syllable’ itself polysyllabic (that is, a word containing three or more syllables). A line of verse, like all other examples of language in use, subdivides into syllables. It can contain almost any practical number of syllables up to eighteen (though longer lines than this, though freakishly unusual, have been used).
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