Scanning Document
How To Scan Verse In English
When spoken aloud, English verse is not intended to sound as regular as the beat in rock-and-roll music. Its relation to the basic rhythmic pattern is more like that of the melody, or the singer's voice—it plays around the beat as well as coinciding with it. In terms of English verse, this means that the stressed syllables do not always fall exactly where we would expect them;
but rather, while never departing too far from the basic pattern, they modify it in order to create special effects: to dramatize the emotion of the words, or to enhance the effect of the images like a rhythmic onomatopoeia, a sort of sonoral mimicry.
This deliberate expressive departure from the basic rhythm, especially when it occurs at the beginning of a poem, often creates uncertainty in the reader; he or she is not sure what the basic rhythm is supposed to be. The following steps were devised to help inexperienced readers over come this difficulty.
1. Read the poem or stanza through until your reading sounds natural, like someone in a real-life situation, or a very good actor speaking realistically—usually two or three times is enough.
2. Read it again; this time mark the stressed syllables as you go. Traditionally this mark resembles the accent mark in Spanish (as in "begín" or "wínter" or "undernéath") Take it one line at a time. If you feel unsure about which syllables are the stressed ones, use the rules of your phonetics course—remember that content words (nouns, active verbs, adjectives and adverbs) receive primary (strong) stress; pronouns, auxiliary verbs and function words usually do not. And for words of three or more syllables, you may need to look up the pronunciation in the dictionary. When marking stressed syllables, remember to read as an actor and listen to the way you sound, because the line may contain words with rhetorical stress or emphasis—in other words, because the speaker of the poem wishes to clarify a meaning or to emphasize a vehement or emotional statement, you will have to stress a word that ordinarily would not receive stress.
3. Now go back and mark the unstressed syllables. Traditionally they are marked with a symbol like the smile of a cartoon face ( ˘ ) over them. Be careful not to mark silent e's or other silent letters as separate syllables!
4. Next you separate the feet by drawing vertical lines between them. Although many people have problems with this step, you have two useful criteria to help you—simplicity and context.
"Simplicity" means that you should place your dividing lines so that the line has as many feet of the same type, and as little variety, as possible. In fact, there should be a clear majority of one kind of foot in the line, if possible. This is a trial-and-error process, like factoring binomial equations in algebra—but it gets easier with practice. .
"Context" means that, when in doubt, divide any line so that it resembles its neighbors or the majority of the other lines. In practice, this means that you have to check back and forth a little, until you feel at ease with the process.
When you do this, remember that you are indicating groups of syllables—marking rhythmic units of sound—you are not working with the spelling of the words. Sometimes the vertical lines will divide a single word so that one syllable belongs in one foot, and the next syllable begins another foot. You can see this in any line of the stanza given as an example given below.
5. Now you can identify the meter of any line. First you tell the type of foot that dominates the line—the type to which the majority of the feet belong. For example, if most of the feet are iambs, the line is iambic. Then you tell the total number of feet in the line—not just the dominant foot— tetrameter if the line consists of four feet, pentameter if it consists of five feet, etc. Finally you identify any irregularities—that is, what type of foot has been used instead of the dominant one, and in what position in the line.
Let's take, for example, the first stanza of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one that every American schoolchild used to have to memorize:
Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With arms like iron bands.
After reading it until it sounds natural, we mark the stressed syllables, thus:
Únder the spréading chéstnut trée
The víllage smíthy stánds;
The smíth, a míghty mán is hé,
With árms like íron bánds.
Next we mark the unstressed syllables:
Úndĕr thĕ spréadĭng chéstnŭt trée
Thĕ víllăge smíthў stánds;
Thĕ smíth, ă míghtў mán ĭs hé,
Wĭth árms lĭke írŏn bánds.
Now we separate the feet by drawing vertical lines, keeping in mind the two criteria of simplicity and context:
Únder | the spréad | ing chést | nut trée
The víll | age smíth | y stánds;
The smíth, | a mígh | ty mán | is hé,
With árms | like í | ron bánds.
Notice that the meter requires that we make vertical lines that divide the words “spreading,” “chestnut,” “smithy,” “mighty,” and “iron,” putting different syllables of the same word into different feet. Most lines of poetry in English require this kind of division when we scan them.
Now that we have divided the lines into feet, how would we identify the meter of this stanza?
We would say that the first line is iambic tetrameter, with a trochee in the first foot;
the second line is iambic trimeter;
the third line is iambic tetrameter;
and the fourth line is iambic trimeter.
Asked to identify the meter of the stanza as a whole, we would say that the stanza consists of a quatrain (four lines) of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.
