Scansion 101, a la Shmoop.
Human beings like rhythm.
We look for it in chants on Game Day…
…in the tapping of the rain against the window…
…and in the clicking of the indicator as we wait to turn left at a light.
And, of course, we look for rhythm in the poems we’re forced to read for our high
school English class.
This is where the technique known as “scansion” comes in.
Scansion involves scanning a poem for meter…
…or the number of feet in a line…
…and rhythm, or the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line…
…and then diagramming the whole thing out with the help of a couple of symbols.
Oh, and when we talk about feet, we’re not talking about the yeasty-smelling kind…
…but rather the number of times a pattern of two or more accented or unaccented syllables
occurs in a line.
Sounds easy, right?
Ha!
Problem is, there are different kinds of feet.
Nope, not different kinds of foot stench…
…but different patterns of accented or unaccented syllables in poetry.
Let’s go over the common meters we’re likely to encounter in Ye Olde High School
English Class.
There’s iambic meter…
…and anapestic meter…
…which are collectively known as rising meters because the pattern moves from unstressed
to stressed syllables.
There’s trochaic <> meter…
…and dactylic <> meter…
…which are collectively known as falling meters because the pattern moves from stressed
to unstressed syllables.
Spondaic <> meter contains only stressed syllables…
…and pyrrhic <> meter contains only unstressed syllables.
These two meters are used to break up a poem’s rhythm…
…rather than to create an entire poem…
…because a poem containing only stressed or only unstressed syllables would be really,
really boring.
Now that we’ve gone over common poetic meters, let’s hit the names for line lengths.
A line with one foot is called a monometer <>…
…a line with two feet, a dimeter <>…
…a line with three feet, a trimeter <>…
…and yada, yada, yada and on and on and on.
To get the name of a poem’s metrical description, we just combine the name of the meter…
…with the name of the line length.
Okay, now that we’ve gone through all the vocabulary…
…and there’s a lot, isn’t there?...
…let’s scan a couple of things and see how we do.
One quick note: it’s possible to use scansion on literature other than poetry.
Take these lines from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, for example: “Now is the winter
of our discontent…
…Made glorious summer by this sun of York…
…And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house…
…In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
These four lines are written in iambic <> meter, the pattern where one unstressed syllable
is followed by one stressed syllable.
There are five feet in each of these lines, making them pentameters.
We combine the name of the meter with the name of the line length to get the metrical
description…
…iambic pentameter <>.
The Bard was a master at incorporating this particular type of rhythm and meter into his
works.
Let’s look at some lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha”…
…“Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest, With the dew and
damp of meadows…”
These four lines are written in trochaic meter, the pattern where one stressed syllable is
followed by one unstressed syllable.
There are four feet in each of these lines, making them tetrameters.
We combine the name of the meter with the name of the line length to get the metrical
description…
…trochaic tetrameter.
Now that we’ve been through the common meters and the names of the line lengths and how
this whole scansion thing works…
…let’s answer a big question: Why, why, why should we care about scanning poetry?
Why can’t we just kick back with a Shirley Temple, read the darned poem, and enjoy?
Forget for the moment that we need to know how to scan a poem in order to ace high school
English.
Scansion is a tool we can use to better understand poetry, plays, or other rhythmic pieces of
literature.
Not only does diagramming the rhythm and meter of a poem show us how a piece should be read
aloud…
…but we also get a peek into the poet’s brain, at the syllables and words he or she
wanted to emphasize.
That peeking-into-the-brain thing is really cool…
…or it could be really disturbing.
And now that we know how to scan a poem, we can take what we’ve learned and apply it
to real life.
The next time we’re stuck in an airport, waiting for that plane to Des Moines…
…we can listen to the guy on his cell phone next to us and, instead of getting annoyed
at his inane conversation…
…figure out the rhythm and meter of his speech.
Yes, it’s dorky…
…but at least we won’t be as bored as we will be once we get to Iowa.