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Molossus (poetry)
A molossus (; from Greek ) is a metrical foot used in Greek and Latin poetry. It consists of three long syllables. Examples of Latin words constituting molossi are ''audiri, cantabant, virtutem''. In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being either stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short, and the unambiguous molossus rarely appears, as it is too easily interpreted as two feet (and thus a metrical fault) or as having at least one destressed syllable. Perhaps the best example of a molossus is the repeated refrain of ''no birds sing'' in the first and last verse of John Keats's poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1819) especially for the way it forces the reader to slow down, which is the poetic essence of this metrical foot. The title of Lord Tennyson's poem "Break, Break, Break" (1842) is sometimes cited as a molossus, but in context it can only be three separate feet: Clement Wood proposes as a more convincing instance: ''great white chief'', of whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molossians
The Molossians () were a group of ancient Greek tribes which inhabited the region of Epirus in classical antiquity. Together with the Chaonians and the Thesprotians, they formed the main tribal groupings of the northwestern Greek group. On their northern frontier, they neighbored the Chaonians and on their southern frontier neighbored the kingdom of the Thesprotians. They formed their own state around 370 BC and were part of the League of Epirus. The most famous Molossian ruler was Pyrrhus of Epirus, considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity. The Molossians sided against Rome in the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC) and were defeated. Following the war, the region witnessed devastation while a considerable number of Molossians and other Epirotes were enslaved and transported to the Roman Republic, in the Italian Peninsula. Ancient sources According to Strabo, the Molossians, along with the Chaonians and Thesprotians, were the most famous among the fourtee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metrical Foot
The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length. The most common feet in English are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapaest. The foot might be compared to a bar, or a beat divided into pulse groups, in musical notation. A metrical foot is, in classical poetry, a combination of two or more short or long syllables in a specific order; although this "does not provide an entirely reliable standard of measurement" in heavily accented Germanic languages such as English. In these languages it is defined as a combination of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables in a specific order. In general, lines of verse can be classified according to the number of feet they contain, using the ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetry
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in place of, Denotation, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, Phonaesthetics#Euphony and cacophony, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm (via metre (poetry), metre), and sound symbolism, to produce musical or other artistic effects. They also frequently organize these effects into :Poetic forms, poetic structures, which may be strict or loose, conventional or invented by the poet. Poetic structures vary dramatically by language and cultural convention, but they often use Metre (poetry), rhythmic metre (patterns of syllable stress or syllable weight, syllable (mora) weight ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Long Syllable
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line. Linguistics A heavy syllable is a syllable with a branching nucleus or a branching rime, although not all such syllables are heavy in every language. A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong; this type of syllable is abbreviated as CVV. A syllable with a branching rime is a ''closed syllable'', that is, one with a coda (one or more consonants at the end of the syllable); this type of syllable is abbreviated CVC. In some languages, both CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, while a syllable with a short vowel as the nucleus and no coda (a CV syllable) is a light syllable. In other languages, only CVV syllables are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' of 1888 described his "Ode to a Nightingale" as "one of the final masterpieces". Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", " Ode on a Grecian Urn", " Sleep and Poetry" and the sonnet " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady without Mercy") is a ballad produced by the English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called '' La Belle Dame sans Mercy''. Considered an English classic, the poem is an example of Keats' poetic preoccupation with love and death. The poem is about a fairy who condemns a knight to an unpleasant fate after she seduces him with her eyes and singing. The fairy inspired several artists to paint images that became early examples of 19th-century ''femme fatale'' iconography. The poem continues to be referred to in many works of literature, music, art, and film. Poem The poem is simple in structure with twelve stanzas of four lines each in an ABCB rhyme scheme. Below are both the original and revised version of the poem: First version The first version occurs in a letter from Keats, written over the period 14 February to 3 May 1819 to his younger brother and s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, '' Poems, Chiefly Lyrical'', in 1830. " Claribel" and " Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Tennyson also focused on short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break", " The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears", and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was based on cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Break, Break, Break
"Break, Break, Break" is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson written during early 1835 and published in 1842. The poem is an elegy that describes Tennyson's feelings of loss after Arthur Henry Hallam died and his feelings of isolation while at Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. Themes The poem describes feelings of loss, spoken by a man standing on the rocky sea shore. It has a strong biographical connection, containing Tennyson's feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. Tennyson captures his strong emotions in other poems, including ''Morte D' Arthur'', "Tithonus", and " Ulysses". The suffering felt within the poem is connected to the suffering described in Tennyson's ''In Memoriam'', in that they both describe longing for Tennyson's deceased friend Hallam. This longing is voiced in the third stanza of "Break, Break, Break". "Break, Break, Break" can be classified as an elegy on the subject of Tennyson's feelings about Hallam. Like " On a Mourner," written a year before, both poems use a very ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clement Wood
Clement Richardson Wood (September 1, 1888 – October 26, 1950) was an American writer, lawyer and political activist. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1909 and received his law degree from Yale in 1911. Wood's second marriage was to Gloria Goddard, who wrote the ''Susan Merton'' series of adventures under the pen name "Louise Logan." He also had at least one son, John Thornton Wood. Writing career Wood mainly wrote poetry. He also wrote ''Tom Sawyer Grows Up'', a sequel to Mark Twain's work. He appeared frequently in pulp magazines, in titles as diverse as ''Telling Tales'', '' Gangster Stories'', ''Flynn's'', and ''Ace-High Magazine''. His story "The Coffin" was included in ''The Best Short Stories of 1922''. In 1929, he wrote the biography, ''Bernarr Macfadden: A Study in Success'', in aid of Macfadden's political aspirations. Politics Wood was a member of the Socialist Party of America The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert W
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' () "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown, godlike" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin.Reaney & Wilson, 1997. ''Dictionary of English Surnames''. Oxford University Press. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe, the name entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fourteener (poetry)
In poetry, a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of seven iambic feet, for which the style is also called iambic heptameter. It is most commonly found in English poetry produced in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fourteeners often appear as rhymed couplets, in which case they may be seen as ballad stanza or common metre hymn quatrains in two rather than four lines. Background Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines combined with Fourteeners, to form a poem of 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in the Elizabethan era. The term was coined by George Gascoigne, because poulters, or poulterers (sellers of poultry), would sometimes give 12 to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also Baker's dozen). When the poulter's measure couplet is divided at its caesurae, it becomes a short measure stanza, a quatrain of 3, 3, 4, and 3 feet. Examples of this form are Nicholas Grimald's ''A Truelove''; Lord Brooke's ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
