Iamb
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IAMB
In the 'Beford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms' 2009, Murfin and Ray state that:
iamb: is 'A metrical foot in poetry that consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The iamb is the most common metrical foot in English poetry; unrhymed iambic pentameter, also called blank verse, is perhaps the most common form of metrical verse in English.
EXAMPLES: afloat, respect, in love. In "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" (1800), one of his "Lucy" poems, William Wordsworth alternated iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter:
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears or sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
(Murfin, Ray, p234, 2009).
An iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in i-amb). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-bove).
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[edit] Origin
The word iamb comes from Iambe, a Greek minor goddess of verse, especially scurrilous, ribald humour. In ancient Greece iambus was mainly a satirical poem, a lampoon, which did not automatically imply a particular metrical type. Iambic metre took its name from being characteristic of iambi, not vice versa[1].
[edit] Accentual-syllabic use
In accentual-syllabic verse we could describe an iamb as a foot that goes like this:
| da | DUM |
Using the 'ictus and x' notation (see systems of scansion for a full discussion of various notations) we can write this as:
|
|
|
The word 'attempt' is a natural iamb:
|
|
|
| at- | tempt |
In phonology, an iambic foot is notated in a flat representation as (σ'σ) or as foot tree with two branches W and S where W = weak and S = strong.
Iambic pentameter is one of the most commonly used measures in English and German poetry. A line of iambic pentameter comprises five consecutive iambs.
Iambic trimeter is the metre of the spoken verses in Greek tragedy and comedy, comprising six iambs - as one iambic metrum consisted of two iambs. In English accentual-syllabic verse, iambic trimeter is a line comprising three iambs.
Another common iambic form is ballad verse, in which a line of iambic tetrameter is succeeded by a line of iambic trimeter, usually in quatrain form.
A. B. "Banjo" Paterson wrote much of his poetry in iambic heptameter (which is sometimes called the 'fourteener'), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner also conforms to this stress pattern (although it is usually written as though it were composed of lines alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter).
The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee.
[edit] Types of Meter
[edit] Tetrameter
- Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
- Content with that my mind doth bring. (Edward Dyer, "My Mind to Me A Kingdom Is")
- 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
- Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. (Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky")
[edit] Pentameter
- To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. (Alfred Tennyson, "Ulysses")
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)
(Although, it could be argued that this line in fact reads: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Meter is often broken in this way, sometimes for intended effect and sometimes simply due to the sound of the words in the line. Where the stresses lie can be debated, as it depends greatly on where the reader decides to place the stresses. Although in this meter the foot ceases to be iambs but trochees.)
- A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! (William Shakespeare, Richard III)
[edit] Heptameter
- I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark. (A. B. Paterson, The Man from Ironbark)
Key:
- Non-bold = unstressed syllable
- Bold = stressed syllable
[edit] References
- ^ Studies in Greek elegy and iambus By Martin Litchfield West Page 22 ISBN 3110045850
2. Murfin, R, & Ray, S, 2009; "The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms", published by Palgrave MacMillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, companies and representatives throught the world, 2009.
Copyright 2009 by Bedford/St. Martin's, all rights reserved.
Libray of Congress Control Number: 2008925882
ISBN-10: 0-312-46188-7,
ISBN-13: 978-0-230-22330-3
