Iambs and lexical stress (ignorant questions).

[Vasdeus]

I've recently been trying to delve into Shakespeare a bit, and have found myself looking mainly on the technical side of his work rather than the content, so as to hopefully gain a greater understanding of what he is doing with his words and why he is doing it. Unfortunately, in my studies I've happened upon an inadequacy in my understanding that no Wikipedia page has been able to ameliorate. I simply can't comprehend the concept of lexical stress, particularly when applied to iambs.

My first problem is that I can't easily discern a stressed syllable from an unstressed one. I'm thinking that is is because I don't understand what makes a syllable stressed. I'm led to believe that it's how one emphasizes their syllables, but wouldn't that make it subjective? Or are some syllables inherently stressed? could it be that lexical stress is relative, and one syllable is only stressed compared to its surrounding syllables? Is it possible to have several successive stressed (or unstressed) syllables without interruption? If not, why is it possible to have two in a row (as stated as an example on Wikipedia's page on iambic pentameter; it says that in the line "Now is the winter of our discontent" that the syllables 'is' and 'the' are stressed. Also is having two consecutive stressed syllables only possible within iambic pentameter when the two syllables are not part of the same foot? Could you have an iamb with two stressed or unstressed syllables? I would think not, as this contradicts the definition of iambic, however, I'd like to make sure.)? Ultimately I'm asking what makes syllables stressed or unstressed, and how can I easily recognise this?

Another of my issues is that I can't see how lexical stress defines rhythm (as it does in, say, iambic pentameter) in some cases. To me it seems that the rhythm in most examples of iambic pentameter is simply that of the beating of a heart; a simple da DUM, da DUM. However, if word stress affects this rhythm as I'm led to believe, this makes for some sometimes jarring and unnatural-feeling readings when variations upon this rhythm are introduced. I'll use the same example that I used before to try to illustrate my point:

Now is the winter of our discontent
.../....×....×.../...x..../..×..../..×.../

To me, this line seems perfectly fit to be read in that lub DUB, lub DUB rhythm, and it's made very jarring to me by altering that rhythm, at least in this instance. However, in other instances it seems perfectly reasonable to alter that rhythm to allow for the line to be read more fluidly. Despite my very limited understanding, I tried my hand at annotating the stress of first two lines of Nabokov's Pale Fire because it seemed to me to have a variant rhythm and I came up with this:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
X.../....X..../...X..../...X...../...X....../
By the false azure in the windowpane;
/....X...../.....X../.../...X..../....X..../

Can someone please tell me if I have done this correctly, and if I have/haven't, why/why not? Perhaps it's the case that lexical stress does not affect rhythm in quiet the way that I think it does, and if it is, can someone please explain to me how stress does affect rhythm?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Many thanks!

[MorpheusSandman]

First, I want to give you a few links. The first is to the best book on Shakespeare's Metrical Art (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520076427/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=), the second is to the best Introduction to Poetic Rhythm (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521423694/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=) in general, the third is to a cheaper alternative (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592403115/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=), and the fourth is to the blog PoemShape (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/what-is-iambic-pentameter-the-basics/) where Patrick Gillespie has some excellent and very thorough posts on the history, practice, and reading of iambic pentameter. I'll do what I can to answer your questions here, but I should note preliminarily that the issue of meter and rhythm is one of long-standing controversy within the study of poetry, and almost everyone has their own opinions and theories.


My first problem is that I can't easily discern a stressed syllable from an unstressed one. I'm thinking that is is because I don't understand what makes a syllable stressed. I'm led to believe that it's how one emphasizes their syllables, but wouldn't that make it subjective? Or are some syllables inherently stressed?Lexical stress is inherently relative, ie, related to cultures and idioms within any language. While there are usually various generalizations that can be made about stress in any language, it's rare that they're completely consistent across all idioms and all people of that language at all times. In English, eg, you could say that nouns, verbs, and adjectives and adverbs tend to be stressed (on at least one syllable); while conjunctions and prepositions tend not to be stressed. An easy example might be:

I LOOKED inSIDe the HOUSE and SAW a DOG

Notice how four of the words that don't take stress are prepositions (in), articles (the, a) and a conjunction (and) while the words that are stressed are a verb (looked), the second half of a preposition (side), a noun (house) a verb (saw) and a noun (dog). So you can see the basics of English rhythm there. This is a pretty natural iambic pentameter line, that's made natural by the lexical stresses of English. It's hard to imagine someone reading this line any other way. So while no syllables that are always inherently stresses, there are syllables that are more typically stressed than others within a language.


could it be that lexical stress is relative, and one syllable is only stressed compared to its surrounding syllables?Yes, stress is always relative to the adjoining syllables. It's not necessarily that all stressed syllables receive the same level of stress, but merely that they're stressed in relation to the syllables both before and after them. Patrick covers this definitively in his post here. (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/dan-schneider-responds/)


Is it possible to have several successive stressed (or unstressed) syllables without interruption?Yes, but it's harder to do in English because English is what's known as a stress-timed language, meaning that it's timed by an equal length between stresses. However, there are certainly ways to "get around" the stress timing. One of the most common ones in terms of consecutive stresses is using monosyllabic adjectives, verbs, and nouns. Donne does this to open and close his Holy Sonnet 10:

Death, be not proud...
...Death, thou shalt die.

All of these syllables are stressed. Donne makes sure of this by using the comma, or else we may be tempted to read the middle two words of both as unstressed. The comma slows us down, so we take a "beat" where the normal unstressed syllable would be. When we start back up again, we must stress "be" and "thou," while "not proud" and "shalt die" are typical lexical stresses. There's no way not to stress all of these words almost equally if you're reading it correctly and pausing at the comma.

As for consecutive unstressed syllables, this is typically achieved by a string of conjunctions and prepositions. Alexander Pope gave a famous example in his Essay on Criticism:

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.

In the second line, because of the strong stress on "Flies," and the elision of the "V" in "over" and "E" in "the" we tend to run all of those syllables together until we get to "bend" (so 3 unstressed syllables in a row), and similar with "skims along the main" where "skims" is such a strong stress it's easier to run "along the" together into non-stresses.

FWIW, these are known as "metrical substitutions," and they happen when a different meter is "substituted" for the traditional iambic pentameter. The Donne example is what's known as a spondaic subsitutions (spondees = a foot of two stressed syllables), while the latter is known as pyrrhic substitutions (pyrrhic = a foot of two unstressed syllables). Pyrrhic substitutions are rather rare in English compared to spondaic substitutions.


If not, why is it possible to have two in a row (as stated as an example on Wikipedia's page on iambic pentameter; it says that in the line "Now is the winter of our discontent" that the syllables 'is' and 'the' are stressed. I'm not sure what Wiki page you're reading, but that's simply incorrect. Now is the winter... is most properly scanned as:

/ - - / - - - / - /

The first foot is a trochaic (trochee = a foot of two syllables where the first is stressed and the second unstressed) substitution, which is very common in English verse, while the third foot is a pyrrhic substitution. While it is possible to stress "is" instead of "now," I think most would consider this reading rather awkward. It is possible to stress "our," but I think this wouldn't be justified by how meter was used in the Renaissance. In that era, spondaic substitutions almost never came in the middle of a line without a caesura (comma/break), and, furthermore, the fact that "of" can't be stressed impels one to speed over it quickly until one gets to a more obvious stress, which means there should be a tendency to run "of our" together quickly to get to the stress "dis".


Also is having two consecutive stressed syllables only possible within iambic pentameter when the two syllables are not part of the same foot? Could you have an iamb with two stressed or unstressed syllables?No, you can have two stresses syllables in the same foot. It's what I called above spondaic substitutions. These substitutions can be part of a generally iambic line, though (meaning, most other feet are still iambs, so the meter is still considered iambic pentameter as opposed any other meter).


Ultimately I'm asking what makes syllables stressed or unstressed, and how can I easily recognise this?Just to reiterate, it's a controversial topic with no definitive (much less easy) answers. You'd really have to read some of the literature on the topic to get a decent grip on the various ways of thinking about lexical and metrical stress and rhythm.


Another of my issues is that I can't see how lexical stress defines rhythm (as it does in, say, iambic pentameter) in some cases. To me it seems that the rhythm in most examples of iambic pentameter is simply that of the beating of a heart; a simple da DUM, da DUM. However, if word stress affects this rhythm as I'm led to believe, this makes for some sometimes jarring and unnatural-feeling readings when variations upon this rhythm are introduced.It's important to separate lexical and metrical stress. Meter grows out of lexical stress (meaning that the poets of any language use the nature of the language that already exists to define meter), but how meter affects lexical stress is the controversial part. What you're asking is, I think, what are we to do in those moments where the natural lexical stresses and the expected metrical stresses conflict. Well, that's at the core of the debate over the issue. The two polarized theories are that: 1) we should obey the metrical stress and "impose" it on the lexical stress regardless of how awkward it might be; 2) we should use lexical stress as a guide for identifying when metrical substitutions are used.

Between these two extremes there is more of a middle ground that I subscribe to, which essentially says that we can try it both ways (imposing metrical stress/analyzing lexical stress) and see what the results are. Oftentimes, if you consistently impose metrical stress you end up with some unique, but not necessarily awkward, meanings. Patrick Gillespie has pointed out on his blog how meter in the Renaissance up through the romantics was essentially used as a way to dictate stress, and as a way to bring out tone and intended meanings. He shows how, eg, a metrical reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/what-is-iambic-pentameter-shakespeares-sonnet-116/) turns it from a poem of idealized, romantic love to something more cynical and satirical. On the other hand, if you insist on ALWAYS imposing metrical stress you will miss out on those times where substitutions are being used for effect. Patrick similarly covers this topic in his analysis of John Keats' Bright Star. (http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/bright-star-by-john-keats-his-sonnet/) IMO, the answer is that we need to be alert to both possibilities, to the meanings brought about by metrical imposition and those brought about metrical substitution based on lexical stress.


Now is the winter of our discontent
.../....×....×.../...x..../..×..../..×.../

To me, this line seems perfectly fit to be read in that lub DUB, lub DUB rhythm, and it's made very jarring to me by altering that rhythm, at least in this instance.
I gave my scansion above, but I really don't think that most would stress "of" in that line.


I tried my hand at annotating the stress of first two lines of Nabokov's Pale Fire because it seemed to me to have a variant rhythm and I came up with this:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
X.../....X..../...X..../...X...../...X....../
By the false azure in the windowpane;
/....X...../.....X../.../...X..../....X..../

Can someone please tell me if I have done this correctly, and if I have/haven't, why/why not? Perhaps it's the case that lexical stress does not affect rhythm in quiet the way that I think it does, and if it is, can someone please explain to me how stress does affect rhythm?I would scan them as:

/ - - / - - - / - /
- - / / - - - / - /

Most of my reasons for scanning it like this have already been given above. The opening "I was" is one of those that can equally be argued to be iambic or be an opening trochaic substitution. Shakespeare has a ton of these that work both ways, and in such situations I think it's genuinely ambiguous (meaning we can read it both ways and not favor one or the other as definitive). "of the" is one of those monosyllabic "preposition/article" combinations that's just never stressed lexically, similar with "By the." The first syllable of "azure" is always stressed, never the second (at least, that I've ever heard). The way I scan it you have:

Trochee / iamb / pyrrhic / iamb / iamb
pyrrhic / spondee / pyrrhic / iamb / iamb

It's two lines that are heavily substituted, yet still feature more iambs than any other foot.

[Vasdeus]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that; I really think that it helped with my understanding, despite obfuscating some of the concepts I thought I had a slight grasp on. I'll be sure to check out the links that you've provided me to try to help with that.

Once again, thanks for replying and helping out, it must have taken you some time.

[MorpheusSandman]

You're welcome. This is one subject of poetry I've been fascinated with for a long time, so I usually take advantage of these opportunities to work out my own thoughts on the matter. If it can help others out as well, then all the better. If you want clarification on any specific points, feel free to ask.

[Vasdeus]

Thanks, I'll be sure to keep that in mind.

[AuntShecky]

I don't know if it's appropriate to use terms from Greek metrics for English poetry-- "pyrrhic," for instance. Years ago on another poetry website I was thoroughly embarrassed when taken to task for referring to obscure terms from ancient prosody, such as talking about quantitative rather than stressed syllables. The terms found in ancient Greek works no longer apply to poetry written in English, if in fact they ever did. I'm fairly certain that Shakespeare (who knew "little Latin and less Greek") wasn't thinking of the elements of Pindaric odes and such when the Dark Lady took her shoes off and ran barefoot through his mind.

The thing about iambic pentameter, so I've been taught, is that it follows the rhythm of natural speech--all in line with human physiology-- inhale/exhale, heartbeats. Hence:
ba-DUM,ba-DUM,ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM

That TIME of YEAR thou MAYst in ME beHOLD.

There is, as you can see, a rhythm in the rising and falling of the stresses. It's relatively easy to find out which syllables are stressed and which are unstressed in a given word. Just look that puppy up in the dictionary which divides the word into syllables and puts a diagonal stress mark over the stressed syllable.

We often hear how, like Major League Pitchers, the masters of metric verse often "change up" the speed of the iambic structure so the rhythm won't sound so monotonous. (Even so, the basic structure, as in a sonnet or in the blank verse of Shakespeare's plays, remains iambic.)

In a way, the poet not only plays the part of a baseball pitcher, but also a real estate agent: "Location, location, location!" In a perfect world the metrical stresses would line up exactly with the word the author intends to emphasize-- "lexical stress" the original poster said. Such a paragon of prosody is not always possible. A versifier would of course attempt to give the important syllables the equivalent in metrical stress, and have the line end with a stressed syllable. (Keats --or was it Shelley?--often used unstressed ("feminine") syllables to end his lines. We seldom see a line ending with a relatively unimportant part of speech, such as a preposition. (Even those who prefer writing free verse know that when they decide how to arrange their line breaks.)

But priority has to go to the conventional pronunciation of a given word; we say QUEStion, not quesTION. And on occasion, the pentameter line might end up with eleven, rather than ten, syllables:

To BE, or NOT to BE: that IS the QUEStion

There are, as has been mentioned in the previous replies, several workarounds. The previous commentator mentioned the trochee, in which the order of the stresses are reversed. (We have to be careful not to flout the cardinal rule of English though-- word order-- and start imitating Yoda from Star Wars.) Sometime when you get the chance, take a minute to listen to the opening line of popular songs-- very often the lyric begins with a stressed syllable -- a trochee-- on the "upbeat." Other ways of doing this are the "headless iamb" or the "tailless trochee."

And finally, there is another kind of metric foot which is called an anapest. It consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stress syllable. (Less common is the dactyl, which is an anapest in reverse.)Both anapest and dactyl originated with the Greeks, but they both are found in English poetry. The anapest is a natural of English expression. As a matter of fact, nearly every time you write or say a prepositional phrase, you're using an anapest:
in the DIRT
down the ROAD
up the STREET

(Edited 12/7/12): It occurs to me that SOME prepositions are more than one-syllable; so, the phrase reverts to an iambic structure:
aROUND the BEND
beHIND the BARN
withIN the HEART

So you can vary the arrangement of stressed syllables in an iambic line with a prepositional phrase.

(I'm going to stop now as I am making an anapest of myself.)

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't know if its appropriate to use terms from Greek metrics for English poetry-- "pyrrhic," for instance. Years ago on another poetry website I was thoroughly embarrassed when taken to task for referring to obscure terms from ancient prosody, such as talking about quantitative rather than stressed syllables. The terms found in ancient Greek works no longer apply to poetry written in English, if in fact they ever did.I don't know what website you're referring to (Eratosphere, maybe?*) that "embarrassed you" and "took you to task" when using the the original Greek terminology to refer to prosody, but I'm quite confident in saying they had no reason for doing so. English prosody was modeled after the Ancients, and we have references to their terminology going back to the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and Romantics certainly used the Greek terminology when referring to their meters, even when expressing a certain reluctance because of the radically different languages they were based on. I've never heard a good argument as to why the Greek names for quantitative meters can't be transferred just as well to stress meters, where short/long translates to unstressed/stressed.

*If it WAS Eratosphere then I'd take it with a grain of salt, because you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy online. In my short time there, I wasn't sure if their collective ignorance outweighed their arrogance or vice versa... but even if it wasn't them, I'd say beware of any self-proclaimed experts on this subject, because, as I said in my post, the controversy is well entrenched and long-standing.


It's relatively easy to find out which syllables are stressed and which are unstressed in a given word. Just look that puppy up in the dictionary which divides the word into syllables and puts a diagonal stress mark over the stressed syllable.Except some words can be stressed on the first, second, or neither syllable depending on context. "Into" is a good example of such a word whose stress or lack thereof almost entirely depends on what words surround it.


We have to be careful not to flout the cardinal rule of English though-- word order-- and start imitating Yoda from Star Wars.This is one of the paradigms of modernism I really dislike. I long for the days when word order was as flexible as anything else. Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, Pope, and so many others made such great usage of flexible word order that's been made impossible to day for fear of readers crying "archaism!" like it's some kind of disease. Nonetheless, most of the great modern poets still tend to pick their spots in which to use unnatural word order; Wallace Stevens being a prime example--"And round it was upon a hill," eg.

[AuntShecky]

English prosody was modeled after the Ancients, and we have references to their terminology going back to the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and Romantics certainly used the Greek terminology when referring to their meters, even when expressing a certain reluctance because of the radically different languages they were based on. I've never heard a good argument as to why the Greek names for quantitative meters can't be transferred just as well to stress meters, where short/long translates to unstressed/stressed.

I originally thought so as well, Morpheus, since so many English poets looked up to Homer as a model, such as Milton and Alexander Pope. I thought short and long and stressed and unstressed were more or less synonyms, but once I finally--finally! at an extremely advanced age -- began to understand how a line scans, I think it's easier (por moi) to say stressed and unstressed.

You might be interested in the following webpage, whose author agrees with you:

http://www.trellismagazine.com/files/Reinventing_the_Wheel.pdf


Except some words can be stressed on the first, second, or neither syllable depending on context. "Into" is a good example of such a word whose stress or lack thereof almost entirely depends on what words surround it.
And thus the context will determine where the stresses go; again, it took me a long time to realize that scanning English verse generally depends on location, location, location.


PS The website you mentioned is not the one where I humiliated myself in so many ways. Since then I've been putting my foot in my mouth on the LitNet exclusively.

[MorpheusSandman]

I thought short and long and stressed and unstressed were more or less synonyms, but once I finally--finally! at an extremely advanced age -- began to understand how a line scans, I think it's easier (por moi) to say stressed and unstressed.I wouldn't say long/short and stressed/unstressed are synonymous, but rather analogous; what differs is the issue of timing. I still think the corresponding meters translate just fine without doing away with the terminology.


You might be interested in the following webpage, whose author agrees with you:Thanks for that; I'll give it a look later.


Since then I've been putting my foot in my mouth on the LitNet exclusively.Awww, I've never seen you humiliate yourself; you're one of the most learned and eloquently pedagogic posters we have around here. :)

[OrphanPip]

Morpheus has done a really good job of covering the topic. I'd just add that there was often a tendency to force an iambic line in some Renaissance poetry, because of the expectation of stresses there is a tendency to sometimes read certain syllables that might not ordinarily be stressed as stressed. This is one of the major contributors to controversy over scansion, some lines just do not scan obviously. The Augustinians, like Pope, were more exact in their metrics and are easier to scan.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'd just add that there was often a tendency to force an iambic line in some Renaissance poetry, because of the expectation of stresses there is a tendency to sometimes read certain syllables that might not ordinarily be stressed as stressed. Yes, but sometimes it was quite intentional, since putting stress on unusual words can change the tone and meaning of a line. Most of the Renaissance poets knew this, and if you read their work by forcing metrical stress then it sometimes highlights meanings that otherwise wouldn't be apparent. This isn't always the case, granted, and especially someone like Donne seemed to not pay too much attention to making meter work for him, but it's certainly the case with a lot of Shakespeare, Herbert, Marlowe, et al.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Scanning lines of English poetry involves two things: rhythm and meter. English is an accentual language, which is to say that words are divided into syllables that have an accentual "stress value." You can find which syllables are stressed by consulting any good English dictionary. In lines of English words there is a more or less "natural rhythm" of stresses upon the word syllables, and these stresses (accents) have to do with the syntax of the verbal statement. "Meter" is a higher level of sonic organization of accents that has is somewhat arbitrary, such as "5 stresses per line of verse," regardless of the "natural rhythm" of the line of verse. A line of verse in English consists of x number or syllables and y number of natural (i.e. dictionary) word accents. English versification thus involves the counting of both stress accents and syllables.