Resolution (meter)
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a long syllable with two short syllables.
Ancient Greek and Latin[]
Resolution is generally found in Greek lyric poetry and in Greek and Roman drama, most frequently in comedy.
It should not be confused with a biceps, which is a point in a meter which can equally be two shorts or a long, as is found in the dactylic hexameter. The biceps is freely able to be two shorts or a long, while resolution, particularly in tragedy, can only occur within very restricted situations. Two resolved longa in the same line is unusual, for instance, while a biceps that is two shorts can freely be followed by another biceps that is two shorts. Also, when two shorts are substituted for a long, they are almost always within the same word-unit.
One example from iambic trimeter:
- τίνων τὸ σεμνὸν ὄνομ' ἂν εὐξαίμην κλύων;
- tínōn tò semnòn ónom' àn euxaímēn klúōn?
- | u – u – | u uu u – | – – u – |
- "Whose sacred name would I pray to when I hear it?"
- (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 41)
Here the resolved pair is the word ὄνομ', so the resolution stays within the same word-unit.
Germanic alliterative verse[]
In the alliterative verse tradition of the ancient and medieval Germanic languages, resolution was also an important feature.
In this tradition, if a stressed syllable comprises a short root vowel followed by only one consonant followed by an unstressed vowel (i.e. '(-)CVCV(-)) these two syllables were in most circumstances counted as only one syllable.[1]
For example, in lines 224b-28 of the Old English poem Beowulf, the following emboldened syllables resolve, counting as only one metrical syllable each:
Þanon up hraðe |
From there, upwards, swiftly |
References[]
- ^ Jun Terasawa, Old English Metre: An Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 31-33.
External links[]
- Iambic Trimeter: Resolutions[dead link]
- Poetic rhythm