01-21-2013, 05:33 AM
Oh god, don't even get me started on that!
Scansion causes rather violent arguments in some circles... suffice to say that no good ever comes of it
The accepted classroom notation these days is "ictus and x", ie / is stressed, x is unstressed -- which is different to when I studied and will most likely be different again in ten years, just to irritate us. There is room in that system for an "intermediate" stress, \. It's useful for scanning what's already written but absolutely pointless when writing poetry in English, because our feet are only measured in relative "stress/unstress" and, as I said, the placement of the words can impact the stresses. Then there's accentual scansion that talks about heavy, light, long and short syllables. Since you're into the analytical stuff, you might be interested in Attridge's single line scansion, but I warn you, at the end of the day there's no substitute for just getting in, doing it, making mistakes and working out for yourself what sounds better.
PS. I don't know if you've seen the Narrative Poetry thread but that might have a few more ideas for you.
Scansion causes rather violent arguments in some circles... suffice to say that no good ever comes of it
The accepted classroom notation these days is "ictus and x", ie / is stressed, x is unstressed -- which is different to when I studied and will most likely be different again in ten years, just to irritate us. There is room in that system for an "intermediate" stress, \. It's useful for scanning what's already written but absolutely pointless when writing poetry in English, because our feet are only measured in relative "stress/unstress" and, as I said, the placement of the words can impact the stresses. Then there's accentual scansion that talks about heavy, light, long and short syllables. Since you're into the analytical stuff, you might be interested in Attridge's single line scansion, but I warn you, at the end of the day there's no substitute for just getting in, doing it, making mistakes and working out for yourself what sounds better.PS. I don't know if you've seen the Narrative Poetry thread but that might have a few more ideas for you.
It could be worse