IAMB (EYE-am)
A
metrical foot consisting of a short (unstressed) syllable
followed by a long (stressed) one.
Common
clues: Poetic foot; Two-syllable poetic foot; Metrical foot;
Anapest relative; Limerick unit; Shakespeare's foot; Prosodic
foot
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Video:
Shakespeare:
Iambic Pentameter, the Beat of the 16th
Century
An
iamb
is
a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of a short
(unstressed) syllable followed by a long (stressed) one.
The
iambic pentameter is one of the most powerful measures in English
and German poetry.
To
strive,
to seek,
to find,
and not
to
yield.
– Alfred
Tennyson
Shakespeare
is considered a master of iambic pentameter.
William
Shakespeare, like many of his contemporaries, wrote poetry and
drama in iambic pentameter and is one of the masters of the
craft. John Milton's unrhymed blank verse in Paradise
Lost and
his other epic poems use iambic pentameter as well.
Here
is an example of iambic pentameter from Christopher Marlowe's "Dr
Faustus":
Was
this the face that launch'd a thousand ships
And
burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
When
read aloud, such verse naturally follows a beat. There is some
debate over whether works such as Shakespeare's and Marlowe's
were originally performed with the rhythm prominent, or whether
it was disguised by the patterns of normal speech as is common
today. In written form, the rhythm looks like this:
da-DUM
da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
(weak
STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG / weak STRONG)
Was-THIS
the-FACE that-LAUNCH'D a-THOU sand-SHIPS
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Iamb" and
from the Wikipedia
article "Iambic pentameter".
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