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Molossus (poetry)
A molossus () is a metrical foot used in Greek and Latin poetry. It consists of three long syllables. Examples of Latin words constituting molossi are ''audiri, cantabant, virtutem''. In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being either stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short, and the unambiguous molossus rarely appears, as it is too easily interpreted as two feet (and thus a metrical fault) or as having at least one destressed syllable. Perhaps the best example of a molossus is the repeated refrain of ''no birds sing'' in the first and last verse of John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1819) especially for the way it forces the reader to slow down, which is the poetic essence of this metrical foot. The title of Lord Tennyson's poem "Break, Break, Break" (1842) is sometimes cited as a molossus, but in context it can only be three separate feet: Clement Wood proposes as a more convincing instance: ''great white chief'', of which an example oc ...
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Metrical Foot
The foot is the basic repeating metre (poetry), rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of poetry, verse in most Indo-European languages, Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classics, classical ancient Greek poetry, ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length. The most common feet in English are the Iamb (foot), iamb, trochee, dactyl (poetry), dactyl, and anapest. The foot might be compared to a Bar (music), bar, or a beat (music), beat divided into pulse groups, in musical notation. The English word "foot" is a translation of the Latin term ''pes'', plural ''pedes'', which in turn is a translation of the Ancient Greek ποῦς, pl. πόδες. The Ancient Greek prosodists, who invented this terminology, specified that a foot must have both an arsis and thesis, arsis and a thesis, that is, a place where the foot was raised ("arsis") ...
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Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the S ...
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Long Syllable
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line. Linguistics A heavy syllable is a syllable with a branching nucleus or a branching rime, although not all such syllables are heavy in every language. A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong; this type of syllable is abbreviated as CVV. A syllable with a branching rime is a ''closed syllable'', that is, one with a coda (one or more consonants at the end of the syllable); this type of syllable is abbreviated CVC. In some languages, both CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, while a syllable with a short vowel as the nucleus and no coda (a CV syllable) is a light syllable. In other languages, only CVV syllables are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are ...
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John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Od ...
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La Belle Dame Sans Merci
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy") is a ballad produced by the England, English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called ''La Belle Dame sans Mercy''. Considered an English classic, the poem is an example of Keats' poetic preoccupation with love and death. The poem is about a fairy who condemns a knight to an unpleasant fate after she seduces him with her eyes and singing. The fairy inspired several artists to paint images that became early examples of 19th-century ''femme fatale'' iconography. The poem continues to be referenced in many works of literature, music, art, and film. Poem The poem is simple in structure with twelve stanzas of four lines each in an ABCB rhyme scheme. Below are both the original and revised version of the poem: Inspiration In 2019 literary scholars Richard Marggraf Turley and Jennifer Squire proposed that the ballad may have been inspired by the ...
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Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, ''Poems, Chiefly Lyrical'', in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana (poem), Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Tennyson also excelled at short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade (poem), The Charge of the Light Brigade", ...
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Break, Break, Break
"Break, Break, Break" is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson written during early 1835 and published in 1842. The poem is an elegy that describes Tennyson's feelings of loss after Arthur Henry Hallam died and his feelings of isolation while at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. Themes The poem describes feelings of loss, spoken by a man standing on the rocky sea shore. It has a strong biographical connection, containing Tennyson's feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. Tennyson captures his strong emotions in other poems, including ''Morte D' Arthur'', "Tithonus", and "Ulysses". The suffering felt within the poem is connected to the suffering described in Tennyson's ''In Memoriam'', in that they both describe longing for Tennyson's deceased friend Hallam. This longing is voiced in the third stanza of "Break, Break, Break". "Break, Break, Break" can be classified as an elegy on the subject of Tennyson's feelings about Hallam. Like "On a Mourner," written a year before, both poems use a very s ...
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Clement Wood
Clement Richardson Wood (September 1, 1888 – October 26, 1950) was an American writer, lawyer and political activist. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1909 and received his law degree from Yale in 1911. Wood's second marriage was to Gloria Goddard, who wrote the ''Susan Merton'' series of adventures under the pen name "Louise Logan." He also had at least one son, John Thornton Wood. Writing career Wood mainly wrote poetry. He also wrote ''Tom Sawyer Grows Up'', a sequel to Mark Twain's work. He appeared frequently in pulp magazines, in titles as diverse as ''Telling Tales'', ''Gangster Stories'', ''Flynn's'', and ''Ace-High Magazine''. His story "The Coffin" was included in ''The Best Short Stories of 1922''. In 1929, he wrote the biography, ''Bernarr Macfadden: A Study in Success'', in aid of Macfadden's political aspirations. Politics Wood was a member of the Socialist Party of America The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political part ...
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Robert W
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be use ...
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Fourteener (poetry)
In poetry, a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of seven iambic feet, for which the style is also called iambic heptameter. It is most commonly found in English poetry produced in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fourteeners often appear as rhymed couplets, in which case they may be seen as ballad stanza or common metre hymn quatrains in two rather than four lines. The term may also be used as a synonym for quatorzain, a 14-line poem, such as a sonnet. Background Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines combined with Fourteeners, to form a poem of 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in the Elizabethan era. The term was coined by George Gascoigne, because poulters, or poulterers (sellers of poultry), would sometimes give 12 to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also Baker's dozen). When the poulter's measure couplet is divided at its caesurae, it becomes a short measure stanza, a quatrain of 3, 3, 4, and 3 fe ...
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Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature. Only after his death did Robert Bridges publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century. It intrigued such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. Early life and family Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, EssexW. H. Gardner (1963), ''Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose'' Penguin p. xvi. (now in Greater London), as the eldest of probably nine children to Manley and Catherine Hopkins, née Smith. He was christened at the Anglican church of S ...
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En Rythme Molossique
''En rythme molossique'' (''In molossian rhythm'') is the second of the Études in the minor keys, Op. 39 for solo piano by the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, published in 1846. It is in D minor. The piece is in rondo form, with two episodes, and is mostly driven by the rhythm . Ronald Smith compares the theme to the octaves in canon of the minuet from Joseph Haydn's string quartet, Op. 76 No. 2. The first episode is lighter in mood, but the rhythm is still pervasive. In the second episode, the rhythm dissolves into a crotchet followed by a minim, and flowing semiquavers appear throughout. The original theme returns only after the second episode concludes, in double counterpoint with the second episode, and the climax then occurs with both episodes being combined. Finally, the flowing semiquavers of the second episode reappear once more in the coda in D major, with the rhythm being repeated over and over again in the bass, and the work ends, referencing Beethoven ...
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