#Scansion definition

[arcadetonki]

Scansion definition

Scansion is also frequently referred to as ‘scanning’. Scansion in poetry simply means to separate the poem (or a poetic form) into feet by segmenting the different syllables based on length. The Usage And Effects of Scansion in Poetry The Usage And Effects of Scansion in Poetry.It’s helpful for students of all ages to break down the lines and try to work out which beats are stressed and which are unstressed. Scansion is important when one is seeking to gain a better understanding of what a poem’s about and why the writer has used a certain meter. In these lines, readers can also find examples of trochees and iambs. Plus, considering his use of refrains, he ends up using dactyls quite often. Tennyson does not use dactyls throughout this piece, but there are a number of them. Its likely readers will find themselves surprised by Tennyson’s use of meter, considering how uncommonly dactyls play a prominent role in poetry. This makes scanning the poem more interesting as well as more necessary. ‘ The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is a famous Tennyson poem that uses dactyls, one of the least common types of metrical feet. The Charge of the Light Brigadeby Alfred Lord Tennyson Although there are some moments in which Dickinson breaks the pattern, it is fairly consistent throughout. This pattern is often found in ballads and used in church hymns. We passed / the Fields / of Gaz– / ing Grain – We passed / the School, / where Chil / dren strove For example, when scanning, one stanza can be written as The poem is written in alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. It helps convey the same sense of peace that the speaker feels standing outside at night, looking at the woods, and contemplating death.īecause I could not stop for death by Emily Dickinsonĭickinson’s best-loved poem is a great example of what’s known as common meter. The poem reads smoothly and peacefully throughout without any major interruptions. The pattern of iambs works to give this poem a sing-song-like pattern. To watch / his woods / fill up / with snow. His house / is in / the vil / lage though Whose woods / these are / I think / I know. Consider this line from the beginning of the poem: Those who are familiar with poetry will likely easily recognize his use of iambic pentameter in this piece. This is in part due to the content, but it has a lot to do with his use of rhyme and rhythm. ‘ Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is one of Frost’s best-loved poems. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost In the second line, the poet uses one anapest, followed by two iambs. For example, the first two lines which read: Earlier on in the poem, readers can find examples of how Poe combined anapests and iambs. Often, poets find it challenging to use anapests or dactyls regularly. In these lines, the first line of the excerpt uses four anapests, something that’s quite unusual in poetry. In each line, the pauses between metrical feet have been indicated with a /, and the stressed beats are in bold.įor the moon / never beams, / without bring / ing me dreamsĪnd the stars / never rise, / but I feel / the bright eyes The following lines start the final stanza of the poem. If you have never read a poem before, using scansion to figure out which beats are stressed and which are unstressed, and then how many there are per line, is a great way to get a handle on what metrical pattern the poet chose to use (or if they chose to use one at all).Įxamples of Scansion Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan PoeĬonsider these lines from Poe’s famous poem, ‘Annabel Lee.’ In this piece, he uses a combination of iambs and anapests. Sometimes, scansion is known as “scanning.” When scanning, a reader notes where the stressed and unstressed syllables are divides them into their metrical feet, and takes note of where any important pauses are. Specifically, so that the reader can analyze the meter, but, it can also be used to take a closer look at the rhyme scheme and the structure of the stanzas. Scansion refers to how a poem can be broken down into its parts.

[nimblermortal]

Ha, got myself a first draft of the Iron Widow filk I told myself months ago I wasn’t going to write.

[saintsenara]

you said “the eleven-year-old riddle, for example, is written in a way which suggests he has an accent and uses words and expression which would be understood as working class”. Can you elaborate on what you mean? I love your meta btw. You are brilliant

thank you for two tmr-related follow-up questions to the slughorn/snape bonanza meta, anons!

[and thank you for calling me "brilliant", anon no. 1. picture me kicking my little feet in the air and chirping like a cat which has just seen a bird outside.]

how is the eleven-year-old riddle shown to be common as muck?

besides the fact he lives in an orphanage.

it's things like this:

“You can’t kid me! The asylum, that’s where you’re from, isn’t it? ‘Professor,’ yes, of course — well, I’m not going, see? That old cat’s the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they’ll tell you!”

while none of this is in a demonstrably non-standard dialect of british english [i.e. riddle doesn't use contractions like "ain't" or "innit", or say "i never did nothing to little amy benson..."] it's definitely a way of phrasing his speech - especially when coupled with the fact that this quote reads like he's speaking really quickly, and he's described as looking "furious" - which would be considered uncouth, especially in the 1930s. [not big fans of emotional volatility, the posh].

his refusal to speak deferentially to dumbledore - and the fact that when he's eventually induced to call him sir he is described as being "unrecognisably polite" - is a similar indication that he doesn't exist as a child in the sort of context where he's forced to perform more refined manners in order to get what he wants.

[the sixteen-year-old riddle is considerably more obsequious, because he recognises that the way to get things out of e.g. slughorn is to comport himself like his upper-class peers.]

and he also - which is iconic of him - calls mrs cole a bitch here. "cat" is a slang term for a gossipy or meddling woman - and while it doesn't quite have the full heft of "bitch" [you find it used with impunity by middle-class women in pretty much every piece of literature written pre-1950...], it's incredibly rude for a child to say it to a stranger who he assumes is a doctor.

riddle does also use non-standard english - for example, when he says of dumbledore's wand:

“Where can I get one of them?”

[the correct form would be "one of those".]

it's this which really hammers home - beyond the ways in which it can be inferred from the context of the setting and the scansion of his [and mrs cole's, they speak fairly similarly] speech - that he has a london accent which would be understood, especially when combined with his second-hand possessions and his general rowdiness, as working-class by the sort of people who otherwise seem to end up in slytherin.

exactly what accent this would be depends on where we think the orphanage is. the closest we come to locating it in canon is that riddle buys [or, let's be real, steals] his diary from a shop on "vauxhall road". this isn't a real place, but vauxhall is an area of south london.

but most people - including me - usually place it in east london [i like, as i've said elsewhere, to put it on dorset street in spitalfields, which is the site of one of jack the ripper's most brutal murders]. this would have him born within the sound of bow bells, meaning he'd have every right to call himself a cockney and would undoubtedly speak with a cockney accent.

the south london and east london accents are recognisably distinct from one another [and from north and west london accents], but they would both be understood as common in the time period, when both anyone born into an upper-class or upper-middle-class background and anyone who aspired to be thought of as having done so would speak with [something as close as they could to] received pronunciation.

why do i think slughorn remains chill until after riddle refuses his job offers?

riddle's conversation with slughorn about horcruxes happens at some point in his sixth year - the academic year 1943-1944. we know this because he's a prefect - but not yet head boy, because he's killed his father [his second victim - the riddles are killed in the summer of 1943, after myrtle is killed at the end of the 1942-1943 school year], and because it just makes sense from a narrative standpoint for this pivotal moment in his life to take place at the same time harry's own life is transforming.

my presumption is that the chat happens during the first term, and that riddle doesn't actually create the diary horcrux until afterwards - so let's say the conversation happens c. november 1943 [when riddle would still be sixteen - the age the diary tells us he is]. slughorn then spends a full eighteen months continuing to support and favour him - advocating for him to be head boy, attempting to set him up in prestigious jobs, presumably being willing to support his application to teach defence against the dark arts - after he's aware that he's not opposed to a bit of splitting the soul.

i don't imagine for a second slughorn would ever have turned him in - he is, after all, fundamentally a coward, and he's clearly worried that he'd get in trouble himself for discussing horcruxes with a pupil - but if he were properly troubled by the discussion i think his behaviour would resemble how he treats harry while he's trying to collect the memory: unfailingly polite and unflappably jolly, but still mysteriously unable to be cornered alone.

and - actually - i think this is the specific source of slughorn's shame over the incident, and it's why i really don't like the memory acquisition scene - "you have no idea how frightening he was" - in the half-blood prince film. slughorn is clearly rattled by the conversation, but he then seems to manage to convince himself that everything's fine and riddle was just being a teen show-off with a morbid streak.

[and the adult voldemort - for his part - evidently has no suspicion at all that slughorn took the conversation seriously enough to waver in his cowardice and admit what he'd told him.]

but riddle refusing to accept his help in securing a job - and, therefore, refusing to enter into the sort of patron-client relationship slughorn canonically establishes with pupils from non-elite backgrounds - is riddle indicating that he refuses to be restrained by the norms of wizarding society.

it's a big "fuck you" to slughorn from the perspective of social convention notwithstanding the other context - a presumed-to-be-muggleborn orphan asserting that he can make it in the world on his own terms without tugging his forelock to the pureblood elite - but it's also evidence that he has no intention of finding himself in a situation where slughorn can control him personally.

it means that slughorn finds himself in a position in which he can't dangle the threat of reporting him to the aurors for [conspiracy to commit] murder/taking an interest in dark magic we can presume is illegal unless riddle does something he wants. and it makes it impossible for slughorn to continue convincing himself their conversation was purely macabre curiosity.

slughorn can convince himself that the eighteen-year-old riddle - the polite and brilliant head boy who undoubtedly continued to attend slug club meetings without incident in the period 1943-1945 [since him being barred from such occasions would have tipped him off that slughorn was worried] - can still be treated in a way which has served him well since he started teaching, and can have his... odder aspects constrained by the pressure of wizarding social convention.

the twenty-year-old riddle - on his own in his knockturn alley shop, with its dark reputation, and apparently uninterested in settling down nicely under the thumb of a respectable patron - cannot be.

and slughorn is terrified of this - and the repercussions it has the potential to bring upon him - but he's also going to be offended by it -and i think it's really interesting to skewer his canonical dislike of being associated with death eaters a little by playing with that offence: i.e. that he's not only unimpressed because lucius malfoy's in azkaban, but because of the whole bending-and-scraping-and-saying-my-lord act.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A List of Poetic Terms

anaphora the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

alliteration the repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

allegory narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated.

apostrophe direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate).

assonance the repetition of vowel-sounds.

beat a stressed (or accented) syllable.

binary dual, twofold, characterized by two parts.

blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter.

caesura an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle. (An audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop.) The French alexandrine, Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, and Latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura.

chiasmus from the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a "crossed" rhetorical parallel. That is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become a chiasmus.

climax the high point; the moment of greatest tension or intensity. The climax can occur at any point in a poem, and can register on different levels, e.g. narrative, rhetorical, or formal.

consonance the repetition of consonant-sounds.

couplet two lines of verse, usually rhymed. Heroic couplet: a rhymed iambic pentameter couplet.

diction word choice, specifically the "class" or "kind" of words chosen.

elegy since the 17th century, usually denotes a reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

end-stopped line a line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete.

enjambed line a "run-on" line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning.

foot the basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

free verse poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

imagery the visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.

meter a regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into feet.

metonomy a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. "White House" for "the President."

ode a genre of lyric, an ode tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject.

prosody the study of versification, i.e. the form—meter, rhyme, rhythm, stanzaic form, sound patterns—into which poets put language to make it verse rather than something else.

refrain a phrase or line recurring at intervals. The definition does not require that a refrain include the entire line, nor that it recur at regular intervals, though refrains often are and do.

rhythm the patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language. Regularly repeating rhythm is called meter.

scansion the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To "scan" a line of poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

simile a figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as "like" or "as."

speaker the "I" of a poem, equivalent to the "narrator" of a prose text. In lyric poetry, the speaker is often an authorial persona.

speech act the manner of expression (as opposed to the content). Examples of speech acts include: question, promise, plea, declaration, and command.

stanza a “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

symbol an image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

symbolism the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas. (Distinct from allegory in that symbolism does not depend on narrative.)

synecdoche a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “wheels” for “car.”

tone the speaker’s or author’s attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter. The tone of a poem immediately impresses itself upon the reader, yet it can be quite difficult to describe and analyze.

topos a traditional theme or motif (e.g. the topos of modesty).

trope a figure of speech, such as a metaphor (trope is often used, incorrectly, to mean topos)

valediction an act or utterance of farewell.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

[garden-ghoul]

Today I'm translating a folk song in Ladino that has got me. You can listen to it here, sung beautifully by Françoise Atlan. It's called "This Mountain Before Me."

This mountain before me Catches alight and burns. It's there I lost my love. I sit and fall to weeping. The little jasmine tree I planted in my garden, I grew it, raised it up. Now only others enjoy it. I want to find out secrets, Those secrets of my life. The sky I want for paper, The sea I want for ink, Trees for quill pens, To write my misfortunes. No-one knows my pain, Not strangers nor family.

Original lyrics and translation notes under the cut.

Esta muntanya d’enfrente S’asiende i va kemando. Ayi perdi al mi amor, M’asento i vo yorando. Arvoliko de yasimin, Yo lo ensembrí en mi guerta. Yo lo kresi, lo engrandesi, Otros s’estan gozando. Sekretos kero deskuvrir, Sekretos de mi vida. El sielo kero por papel, La mar kero por tinta. Los arvoles por pendolas, Para eskrivir mis males, No ay ken sepa mi dolor, Ni ajenos ni parientes.

It's a pretty straightforward one, honestly, and it helps that I found a Spanish translation online. And though I can't guarantee that expressions are used the same way in Spanish and Ladino, I've used Spanish as a guide where necessary. Mostly I wanted to share it here because the imagery fucking rules. One thing I really love is how opaque some of the metaphor is here. Are the mountain and the tree literal objects that exist? If so, what's the connection between them?

fall to weeping --- vo yorando/voy llorando as opposed to simply yoro; I think ir is being used here in the sense of beginning or becoming something. The same construction is used in the second line; I might have translated that as "catches alight and begins to burn" but I'm trying for a sort of scansion.

jasmine tree --- Atlan does not say "yasimin," but I have no idea what she's actually saying, and the lyrics I've found online said this.

raised it up --- my dictionary gives engrandecer as "to amplify, enlarge, magnify; exalt, extol; enhance." Kind of reminds me of the language in the second section of Kaddish! Interestingly the Spanish translator chose to render this as "floreció," ("it flourished") even when a cognate was available. Anyway I think this isn't just meant in the sense of literally growing it taller, but also making it beautiful and worthy of love.

only others --- it just says "others are enjoying it," so technically this could be the speaker saying that after she's raised the tree she can share it with everyone, but the bitter tone of the song suggests otherwise.

misfortunes --- definitely some ambiguity since the word being used here is males. It could mean the singer's misdeeds, ailments, or misfortunes. I love the idea of her feeling terrible guilt for something she's done and wanting to write it down, but I think the text definitely implies it's misfortunes.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

hi! how do you write something that has a poetic feel to it? i don't know how some writers do it because it's not the words itself that they use. i noticed they don't really use flowery words so it's not that. i'm sorry if this doesn't make sense!

You know, I think this is something I only know the answer to because I studied writing in college. Because poetry is not exactly my thing, but I was forcibly exposed to it anyway.

Anyway, it's good you noticed it's not about using fancy words! Because that's not what poetry is.

If you have ever paid attention when studying poetry in school, word choice is something you look at...but only in relation to other words. The primary things you study in poetry are things like scansion and meter.

If you think about the forms of poetry you can first image, you have things like haiku, which are defined by a syllable pattern broken in specific ways (and, traditionally, on certain kinds of topics). Limericks, which are defined by rhyme structure. Sonnets, which are defined by meter and syllable patterns and rhyme. Blank verse and other kinds of poetry might not have strict structures, but they're arranged on similar lines.

None of those definitions have anything to do with "Must use five dollar words" or "must use words that cause euphony" or anything else!

Poetry is about the way words are put together, how they're arranged in groups, and how they're separated. Where emphasis lies and how it might be different than normal. Which words are arranged together so they're connected in the structure of the poem.

And so when prose sounds poetic, it uses those concepts and puts into in a sentence.

How do you do that? I mean, honestly, lots of practice. Trying to come up with an example would be a lot of work and probably come off badly, so I'm afraid I'll pass this time.

[viablecanvas]

Scansion

I wrote a poem for you in my sleep last night.

It was soft and beautiful

I kissed your temple as I recited it

Words, like honey, dripped from my tongue and into your eager mouth

You swallowed them whole

Me and us and you and I converging in stanzas

Counting heartbeats in iambs

Contemplating phonemes and prosody

Is this a stanza or a strophe?

And as you read the definition I brought you into me

Rising action through alliteration

Torrents of tongues and teeth

Teasing and tempting

And we sought the climax together.

[terristack]

Scansion generator

#SCANSION GENERATOR GENERATOR#

#SCANSION GENERATOR PORTABLE#

Version of the Morpheus morphological analyzer. The macronization is performed using a part-of-speech taggerĭependency Treebank, and with macrons provided by a customized The expected accuracy on an average classical text isĮstimated to be about 98% to 99%. This automatic macronizer lets you quickly mark all the long vowels Maintenance and continuous development! Any amount is very much Time-saving, please consider making a donation, to support If you use the macronizer regularly and find it helpful and When tested on a couple of books of theĪeneid (from the eminent Dickinson CollegeĬommentaries), this has been demonstrated to cut the number ofĮrroneous vowel lengths in half! Currently, dactylic hexametersĪnd elegiac distichs are supported other meters may be added.Īlso, I have now added a PayPal donation button: July 2016: I am happy to announce that the Macronizer now isĪble to take the meter into account when guessing the vowel October 2016: The performance on texts written in all uppercase letters has been greatly improved. May 2017: I have now made the macronized text editable, which means that it will now be much easier to correct typos or misspellings while proofreading the text. Ĭompare result with correctly macronized input text.Īugust 2017: More meters added! The macronizer can now handle hendecasyllables as well as distichs of iambic trimeters and dimeters ( Beātus ille quī procul negōtiīs.). To improve the result, try to scan the text as. Through these devices our goal is to reach a wider audience and engage people to reconnect with poetry.Note: In order to avoid time out from the server, input longer than 50000 characters will be truncated.

#SCANSION GENERATOR PORTABLE#

and a “poetry box” (la boîte à poésie), a portable version of the original idea that can be demonstrated in public events (based on Raspberry Pi components).

#SCANSION GENERATOR GENERATOR#

The generator uses this analysis to produce random sonnets, with different possible structures, respecting the rules of French versification (the code and the resources used, especially the sonnet database, are open source and freely available for research).Ī series of “side products” have been produced from the project, including: In order to do this, the first step is to get a phonetic transcription of the last word of each verse, but this is not enough : a series of rules had thus to be defined to get a proper analysis of rhyme from the phonetic transcription of the last word of each verse. The project requires to get access to a formal representation of rhymes. Each sonnet is encoded in a XML format along with related metadata, and a TEI version of the database is available. Oupoco is currently based on a collection of around 4000 sonnets from a large number of authors from the 19 th century, and this database is regularly expanding (thanks to collaboration, especially with the Bibliothèque nationale de France). It is thus very different from the numerous projects dedicated to the pure generation of poetry, being with symbolic or neural methods. From this point of view, even if the project is intended to generate new sonnets, it is largely based on the development of analysis tools able to identify the scansion, the rhyme and the structure of the original sonnets. The challenge is thus more complex than the one proposed originally by Queneau since our sonnets do not have the same scansion and rhyme. To overcome this problem, we developed the Oupoco project, aiming at proposing a sonnet generator based on the recombination of a large collection of 19th century French sonnets. It would be tempting to develop a computer-based version of Queneau’s work, but Queneau’s book is still under copyright, and it is by definition limited to its ten original sonnets. Queneau’s book is a collection of ten sonnets which verses can be freely recombined to form new poems. Oupoco (L’ouvroir de poésie combinatoire) is a project taking inspiration from RaymondQueneau's book Cent mille mille milliards de poèmes, published in 1961.

[sanguinifex]

IT👏 DOESN'T👏 NEED👏 TO👏 BE👏MARKED👏 LONG👏IF👏 IT'S👏 ONLY👏LONG👏BY👏 POSITION👏

[youlooklike-clarabow]

41-45!

S AS FHDSGGHRS THANK YOU!!!!! IM SHOOK SOMEONE ACTUALLY RESPONDED OKAY BUCKLE IN FOLKS

41. what kind of editions/versions do you like to read?

For acting, ALWAYS the first folio. Editors always fuck up the scansion and punctuation and spelling and it completely changes the way you’d play it and it infuriates me. (See: the Folio vs MIT Macbeth 1.7)

For reading, probably the Arden Third or honestly? The Barnes and noble. They have some real handy footnotes.

42. are you predominantly a drama nerd, a literature nerd, a history nerd, or something else?

Definitely a drama nerd, but I guess like a literature-as-drama nerd? Like I fuck with Shakespeare obviously and stage / film adaptations of classic lit (someone talk to me about Kate Hamill’s Jane Austen adaptations or The Green Knight movie).

(And obviously a greek tragedy nerd peep the url)

43. funniest line from a tragedy?

God, there are so many. It’s such a common answer but I’m working on Titus Andronicus rn and Aaron’s ‘villain I have done thy mother’ line always makes me laugh. Also, pretty much anything said by Mercutio in R+J, specifically this whole exchange:

ROMEO

I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO

And so did I.

ROMEO

Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO

That dreamers often lie.

44. most dramatically compelling line from a comedy?

GOD ALSO SO MANY. I’d say the two that stick out are Viola’s whole monologue in Twelfth Night 2.4, starting with

VIOLA

Ay, but I know--

DUKE ORSINO

What dost thou know?

VIOLA

Too well what love women to men may owe:

In faith, they are as true of heart as we.

My father had a daughter loved a man,

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship.

BUT shout to this Much Ado 2.1 line that always makes me cry:

DON PEDRO

[…,] you were born in

a merry hour.

BEATRICE

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there

was a star danced, and under that was I born.

45. share a Shakespearean hot take or unpopular opinion

(Aggressiveness coming) it’s not a cool or edgy or a well informed take to say Romeo and Juliet is just about some stupid kids who caused a bunch of deaths cause they couldn’t chill. You’re not only not #edgy for thinking that, but you have the reading comprehension skills of a fucking child. Cool you saw one #edgy 2012 tumblr post. Have you even read the play? Much less read it closely and done research on it? I didn’t think so. If you think R&J is about stupid kids, you’re not as interesting and mature as you think you are, you’re not #notlikeothergirls, grow up and read the gd play properly.

Sorry apparently that’s a sensitive subject for me agrshjfsgjj

[savageandwise]

As a somewhat new member of the fandom who's read a lot of old discussions here and elsewhere, I think I've fallen into the trap of assuming every Oasis/Liam/NGHFB song must be autobiographical in some way but I'm beginning to wonder if that's not the case. Do you have any thoughts on that? I've found myself listening to one song and thinking "That doesn't seem to fit his life, who could this be about?" and then I remember oh yeah, songs can actually be fictional in inspiration like poetry or novels. I feel like Liam's songs are more likely to be autobiographical to some degree because he likes to let us know how he feels about everyone and everything, while Noel is more guarded. That said, I think even though they throw the word "woman" or "girl" in the song, it doesn't mean it's not about his brother. "Gone" definitely sounds like it's about Noel to me.

I spent a lot of time analysing and over analysing Beatles and Solo Beatles lyrics before joining this fandom and I've put a lot of thought into it. I'd say not every song is autobiographical is certainly true. Noel has a lot of pretty standard rock and roll lyrics that are more about a vibe than expressing his feelings. Of course sometimes there's just a line here or there where you sort of think...that's such a specific line ...there must be some emotions in there. But that doesn't necessarily mean the whole song is about someone.

I think you're right. When it comes to Liam more of his songs seem to be specifically about his life and yes, about Noel. Noel certainly thinks so. And Liam often implies it/says it. Or at the very least says he Noel is in his head when he's singing the song. (Once) I'm sure Paper Crown is about Noel too. So yeah, the fact that the lyrics contain the words 'girl' or 'woman' definitely doesn't mean the song is about an actual girl or woman. (The Beatles had a lot of that too) the other thing to keep in mind is that when you're writing a song you have to make sure the scansion works so you might throw in a girl or a babe the make the verse fit. Yes, you could use boy too. But really, as a writer, you're not under an obligation to be truthful in lyrics you can change things for creative licence. (Noel's ocean imagery though he hates beaches and swimming) sometimes things just sound good.

With Liam you also have to keep in mind he has a team of songwriters. So the actual words are not necessarily his. (They are sometimes though like Bold) his song writers might intentionally put a thing in that's biographical or seems to be about Noel. They're also aware that's what fans look for. So yeah, agree. Gone seems to be about Noel for sure. (Liam also has to okay the songs so he's well aware)

I think the idea that Noel is much more guarded is only partially true. He gives that impression for sure. But at the same time he plays with the idea songs are about his brother and has done ever since Oasis. He'll say oh noo...that's not about him and then throw in comments about having to change the word brother to lover in You Know You Can't Go Back because he worried people would think it was about Liam (reverse psychology anyone? Now I'm certainly thinking it's about him) The amount of times he's protested Acquiesce isn't about Liam is interesting too.

Bottom line? They both know what sells and it's their relationship. (Of course that doesn't mean the feelings aren't genuine) Lennon and McCartney had a self proclaimed lyrical dialogue throughout the seventies where they admitted they wrote songs for each other/openly speculated which songs the other wrote for them. I often think Liam and Noel are following in their footsteps.

Welcome to fandom!!! Thanks for the ask!

[the-master-maid]

I make an attempt at…Poetry Analysis (Tolkien; In Western Lands) and end up referencing Scotland’s worst poet

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run, 

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night 

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey's end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.

- Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

I am no man! sorry, I mean, I am no poetry major! So, if the following analysis makes you weep (and the tears shed are not the happy tears of one who believes they’ve just encountered the next great literary critic) send me an ask,  let me know or just think to yourself, “well, this is shite but nae mind. The Mastermaid can go hang for all I care. I’d rather read William Topaz McGonagall anyway.” and fyi, WTM is known as the worst poet in Scotland. People used to throw cabbages at him in the 1800s, poor sod!

What poetic meter is this poem written in? Tolkien always uses traditional poetic meter. long after it went out of fashion, I might add. Hip with the kids in the age of jazz and razzmatazz he was not! Nor were he and Lewis jumping into a motorcar together to get stoned and take to the open road while riffing on Kerouac. No, they were cozying up in a pub and probably trying not to make moony eyes at each other while they argued about God. But, I digress…

Meter, what meter!?

Iambic Tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter maybe? It’s the same meter as Lewis Carrol's the Walrus and the Carpenter. 

Iambic Heptameter (Fourteener) featuring rhyming couplets.? AABBCCDD rhyme structure. Each couplet rhymes in two places, at the end of the first part of the line and at the very end. I suppose that’s why each half-line is actually written on a separate line? (and if you are counting each separate line then you get the rhyming structure: ABABCDCD, EFEFBGBG. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of poetic structure can let me know if any of this is correct and how best to show the structure of this poem...)

There’s a rising and falling throughout the poem as the poet speaks of the things in the sky: sun, stars, birds, cloudless night, tree branches, high towers, steep mountains, and the things down low down; deep buried darkness, the flowers rising in spring, waters running. The very images that are touched upon bring one up and down, up to the sun, down to the earth, up to the stars, down to deeply buried darkness. Up to towers and mountains and stars. Inside this up and down movement of the images is further movement located in nature; water running, trees budding, birds singing. The images of home are very much alive. Moving, singing, growing. But the images near the beginning (the sun) and at the end (the stars) are things from the heavens. 

At the beginning of the poem though, the poet has to take us out of the dark and empty tower where we sit with Sam in despair and so the first thought is the western lands. The lands that pull us out. Once we are out of the tower and in the western lands, we are free to see up to the heavens and down to the little things on the earth.

The “may” is interesting. It illustrates the poet's hope that these natural cycles are happening or perhaps that these things are allowed to happen: the flower may rise, trees may bud ...the poet then imagines that perhaps it is night there, but the night he imagines far away in the west is not evil but full of elven starlight and beech trees: things of beauty and not of fear and evil. It brings to mind that thought that Tolkien may have given to Gandalf (can’t look it up at the moment as I’m rather horizontally prone) that even darkness was not evil in the beginning. Or of Bombadil when he says that he walked in darkness before the shadow… a theme, a motif, if you will; the idea of a pure darkness before the Fall.

I am told that when studying poetic meter you have to scan it with specially marks that make you look either like you are Someone Really Smart or like an actor auditioning for A Beautiful Mind. You need a way to write the rhythm; da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum (short/unstressed followed by long/stressed syllable) Or dum-da da-dum dum dum …well, you get the picture. So I’ve used x for my da snd / for my dum. Definitely makes you feel like a S.R.S. until you get it wrong and end up metaphorically knocking your head on the piano like that composer muppet in the 1980s Sesame Street, and yelling “I’ll never get it, never, never.” Sorry, digressing again…

Here goes my attempt at scansion and noting the rhyming pattern.

      x    /     x     /      x    /      x    /      x    /          x     /     x    /     II

A) In western lands beneath the Sun the flowers may rise in Spring,

      x      /       x      /      x    /    x    /      x    /    x   /    x   /    II

A) the trees may bud, the waters run, the merry finches sing.

B) Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night and swaying beeches bear

B) the Elven-stars as jewels white amid their branching hair.

C) Though here at journey's end I lie in darkness buried deep,

C) beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep,

D) above all shadows rides the Sun and Stars for ever dwell:

D) I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.

The poet only gives one line to his present predicament (though here at journey’s end…) and he chooses to focus on the things that are beyond the reach of the darkness. From the beginning of the second stanza he also starts with himself being at ‘journey’s end’ a reference to death and hopelessness of ever getting out. But by the fourth line, he says ‘I will not say the day is done, nor bid the stars farewell’: he resists and refuses to say the day is done, he refuses to say goodbye. He is resisting hopelessness and evil, darkness and death. His hopelessness, in other words, is short lived. It very much is a Sam poem. And of course, the only thing that can make Sam feel any hopelessness whatsoever is the loss of frodo.

[gothhabiba]

This is kinda a dumb question and I’m pretty sure I’m just a lost cause but is there a foolproof way u to tell stressed and unstressed syllables apart? like I get how they’re supposed to sound diff and to sound it out, but idk why I have such trouble hearing the difference btwn the two? Like if u told me to choose a poem w/ iambic pentameter I cld prolly do process of elimination, but writing out a meter for a poem I almost always get at least half of it wrong...

it’s not a silly question! because metre isn’t actually a feature of language (like prosody) but rather an interpretive framework that’s sort of laid over top of it, scansion isn’t completely unambiguous. it’s not only that poets who write in metre have to chuse words that fit into that metre—it’s also the case that the metre they’re understood to be writing in can influence how we read those words, because it organises our expectations of what sort of stress will fall next.

I’d say there are syllables that are definitely stressed, syllables that are definitely unstressed, and syllables that could go either way, but that we’re likely to interpret as either stressed or unstressed based on what we would expect from where they fall in the metrical frame.

to take an example off the top of my head: the title of a recent poem of mine is “questions for the chronic patient.” this could be scanned like this (with a slash representing a strong & a period a weak syllable):

    /       .     .    .        /    .     /    . questions for the chronic patient

in words of two syllables, it’s generally pretty clear-cut which syllable is stressed. in terms of prosody, stress in English is often communicated by syllable length—the stressed syllable in a word is the one that takes the longest to say (consider “comp-U-ter,” “an-AL-y-sis,” &c.)—thus English is sometimes called a “stress-timed” language. [even for native English speakers who pronounce this sort of thing without thinking about it, it’s not always so obvious what actual phenomena of sound or articulation we’re talking about when referring to stress--& this is actually a bit different according to your variety of English as well. a really detailed account of this would have to account for pitch too but lmao.]

at any rate, paying attention to timing should help you differentiate between stressed and unstressed syllables within a word, given some practice. when in doubt, any dictionary will tell you the primary stress in a word: so, for “question,” Merriam-Webster tells me ˈkwes-chən, which means that the first syllable (the one with the apostrophe before it!) is stressed. other dictionaries may put the stressed syllable in all caps.

this gets a touch more complicated when considering words with a primary & a secondary stress (e.g. SEC-on-dar-y, ir-REV-oc-a-ble, ex-tra-OR-din-ar-y). secondary stresses may be denoted (especially by dictionaries that use the IPA) by a vertical line before and a bit below the syllable in question, as in the above link. which syllables will be stressed in English words is almost entirely unpredictable, but as long as you know how the words are pronounced, you can figure it out through close attention to that. maybe try breaking the words down into their constituent syllables first, and then noting which ones take the longest amount of time to say or seem to be “emphasised” the most.

so that gets us to the 'correct' scansion for “questions,” “chronic,” and “patient.” what about “for the”? prepositions and determiners and little words like that tend to be unstressed. you can hear this, again, paying attention to time as you read it aloud: the last syllable of “questions” and all the way to the first syllable of “chronic” may sort of run together. another way of telling that a syllable is unstressed is if its vowels are “reduced”—that is, if you pronounce them with a schwa or “uh” sound rather than the sound you might use if you were to pronounce the word very carefully in isolation. you probably wouldn’t say “questions for [sounds like “four”] thee chronic patient,” but something more like “questions fur thuh chronic patient.” QUES-tions-for-the CHRON-ic PA-tient.

it’s also possible, though, to decide that this is actually a line of trochaic tetrameter (that is, four trochees per line, each trochee being a metrical foot consisting of a strong followed by a weak syllable: DA-dum), which is a common meter in English. I would be likely to make this decision if this line were surrounded by other lines in trochaic tetrameter. if this were the case, I might scan the same line thusly:

   /       .      /    .       /    .      /    . questions for the chronic patient

reading this aloud, I might stress the word “for” a little bit more than I would otherwise, because, based on where it falls in the metre, I expect it to be stressed. neither of these scansions is 'wrong'--the first one (which, if we take this to be a line of trochaic tetrameter, would hold that “for the” represents a phyrric substitution) just privileges responsiveness to natural speech contours a bit more, and the second one privileges the metre (as a construct or framework) a bit more.

all of this has primarily talked about lexical (word) stress. English also has patterns of prosodic stress—consider, for example, how “How could I have known that?” and “How could I have known that?” seem to be asking slightly different questions by emphasising different information.

so sentence-level stress patterns are also something that we have to consider in scansion. these respond to linguistic questions of what is held to be relevant or new information (as in the foregoing example), and to grammatical or syntactic factors. “How could I have known that he would be there anyway?” for example, could scan as purely trochaic (HOW could *I* have KNOWN that HE would BE there AN-y-WAY), whereas “How could I have known that? He would be there anyway.” seems to place more stress on “that” (since here it’s a demonstrative pronoun, rather than a subordinating conjunction) (HOW could *I* have known THAT? HE would BE there AN-y-WAY).

again, you may find it helpful to break down the sentence into individual syllables, say it aloud, and consider which syllables you seem to be spending the most time on, saying the loudest, or changing your pitch the most on. some students find it helpful to clap their hands on strong syllables or otherwise try to understand stress in terms of rhythm or motion.

basically, stress in English is an incredibly complicated topic that linguists very much don’t agree on, and metre is an artificial (and artificially simple) organising principle laid over top of it. outside of just mistaking which syllable in a multisyllabic word is emphasised, it’s very possible to produce a scansion that’s different from someone else’s without its being wrong. it’s often best to allow your understanding of what metre you should be hearing to influence your scansion.

I write all of the above, btw, as someone who’s studied both linguistics & poetry (including poetic metre) in some depth. I’d recommend Linguistics for Students of Literature if you’re interested in reading more about any of this.

[shieldmaiden19]

Do you have the translation of Mo Ghille Mair into Mando'a still (i hope I spelled the title right. I don't always remember the spelling off the top of my head)? That's so cool that you did that!!

Oh my god, yes I do! If I have a free second and can figure out the recorder on my phone, I'll try and record myself singing it.

This actually translated really well into Mando'a once I finagled with some words (using a translation site I'll link to later that is *awesome*), but experts, please weigh in!! I'm not an expert on tense, sentence structure, or gender in any way, shape or form. The only thing I'm set on is 'mandokarla' for 'mo ghile ghile mear' in the scansion.

Kaysh cuyir mandokarla

Kaysh cuyir vercopaanir

Ni ganar nayc udes

Sulye saryr ba'slanar

I imagined it being about Mandalore the First and being kind of the rallying song to begin festivals and community gatherings. I can definitely think of one or two other songs that would fit the Mando community if y'all are interested?

[reasonableapproximation]

"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"

Is that actually a useful mnemonic? I've definitely had times when I could only remember "something hundred and something-two", and the rhyming and scansion admits 36 possibilities. (1xx2 where each x could be 3,4,5,6,8,9.) But maybe having the rhyme is helpful even if the rhyme itself isn't very constrained? Presumably more helpful if it was more constrained, but some helpful anyway?

[suits-of-woe]

A Cool Scansion Discovery

So yesterday I was talking with a friend about how much meter in poetry can reveal about meaning and how it should be spoken and so I decided to scan one of my favorite sonnets, Sonnet 57, and pay specific attention to the pronouns.

And y’all, I’m so glad I did. It proved my point so much better than I was expecting. Check this out: here’s a pretty basic scanning of the sonnet, only really diverting from the iambic pentameter where I felt it definitely had to:

Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu; Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are how happy you make those. So true a fool is love that in your will, Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

Look at those pronoun placements. There are 12 instances of you/your in this poem, 8 of which are stressed and 4 of which are unstressed. And of those 4, 3 of them are actually part of phrases referring to the “I” figure -- “your slave,” “your servant,” and of course “your will” with the obvious pun on Shakespeare’s name.

In contrast, there are 7 instances of I/my in the poem, only one of which lands on a stressed syllable.

And maybe I’m just a dumb Shakespeare nerd, but this impressed me so much. You could read none of the words of this poem besides the pronouns and still come away with a clear sense that the “you” figure is much more important and valued than the “I” figure. The idea of this poem is so baked into the heart of the language. I already knew scansion was cool, but this kind of blew my mind.