Poetic Scansion

1
Poetic Scansion

• Foot and Line Length

2
Poetic Scansion

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Metrical Feet Lessons for a Boy
• Trochee trips from long to short.
• From long to long in solemn sort
• Slow spondee stalks strong foot! yet ill able
• Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
• Iambics march from short to long-
• With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests
  throng.

3
Poetic Scansion

• Scansion
• Scansion is a process by which one analyzes the
  stressed and unstressed syllables in feet and
  lines of poetry.

4
Poetic Scansion

• Scansion Metric Feet
• Iamb unstressed stressed
• Trochee stressed unstressed
• Anapest unstressed, unstressed stressed
• Dactyl stressed unstressed, unstressed
• Spondee stressed, stressed

5
Poetic Scansion

• Scansion Metric Feet and their sounds
• Iamb da, DA awake
• Trochee DA, da wakeful
• Anapest da, da, DA in a dream
• Dactyl DA, da, da sleepily
• Spondee DA, DA dream house

6
Poetic Scansion

• Scansion Line Length
• Trimeter a line with three metrical feet
• Tetrameter a line with four metrical feet
• Pentameter a line with five metrical feet
• Hexameter a line with six metrical feet

7
Poetic Scansion

• The Beatles
• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
• PICture your SELF in a BOAT on a River with
• TANgerine TREE-eees and MARmalade SKIiies
• Dactyl Stressed, Unstressed, Unstressed
• Tetrameter four feet per line
• Dactylic Tetrameter