Poetry and sound devices

1. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2016

2. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• Poetry derives its name from the Greek verb poiêin
which means ‘to create’. It was born as an oral art,
generally accompanied by dancing and music and is the
oldest form of literature.
• People used poetry as a means
1. The origin of the terms
to express the most
remarkable events
in their lives.
to convey the
feelings associated
with them.

3. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• Poetry is characterised by musical patterns of sounds
which are based on the natural qualities
of spoken language.
• Its language is far more condensed and intensified:
the poet combines words to make his reader feel what
he has felt and experience what he has experienced.
2. Musical patterns

4. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
3. Basic structurals units
• A line of poetry in English is usually from eight to
twelve syllables in length.
• Stanzas are normally from two to twelve lines long.
the line
(the basic unit)
the canto
or book
the stanza
(a section of a poem
which consists of
several lines)
All these can vary almost infinitely
The structural units of poetry are

5. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• The types of stanzas are:
- the couplet (two lines);
- the tercet (three lines);
- the quatrain (four lines);
- the sestet (six lines);
- the octave (eight lines).
A complete poem may consist of only two lines, as in the
case of the epigram, while narrative poems may extend
over thousands of lines.
4. Common types of stanzas

6. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
5. Rhythm
• Rhythm generally refers to the pace or speed
of a poem.
• While the Italian language is syllable-timed, English is
stress-timed.
• Stress is much more important to rhythm
than syllables.

7. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
6. Metre
• An important part of the rhythm is metre, which is
the ‘beat’ of a poem, that is the distribution within
the line of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• It is measured in feet, with different names
according to the arrangement of syllables. A foot is
a group of two syllables.

8. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
6. Metre
• Adapted into English, the long syllables became the
stressed syllables, marked with a ‘¯’, and the short syllables
became unstressed syllables, marked with a ‘˘’:
‘And makes’ is a segment, or foot, which
contains an unstressed syllable (˘) and a
stressed syllable (¯).

9. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
7. Words
Articles, auxiliaries,
conjunctions, prepositions
and pronouns are usually
unstressed words.
Grammatical
words
unstressed
Content
words
stressed
Adjectives, nouns,
verbs and adverbs
are usually stressed
words.

10. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
8. Types of feet
• Two types of feet
• Stressed and unstressed syllables inside a word or a line
can combine into different patterns
unstress-stress
stress-unstress
the unstress-stress pattern
(˘/¯) is called iamb and it is the
most common foot in English
poetry.
the stress-unstress pattern
(¯/˘) is called trochee.

11. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
8. Types of feet
• For many centuries the iambic foot, particularly the
iambic pentameter (generally corresponding to ten
syllables), has been the most common metre in
English poetry.
• Example:
Will I / with wine / and was / sails so / convince
(W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1)

12. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
9. Analyse rhythm
• How to analyse rhythm in a poetic text? Here are some
tips that may be useful when you deal with rhythm in
the analysis of a poem:
1. write the stress on the syllables;
2. count the number of syllables in each line;
3. write the slant bars (/) in order to recognise the feet;
4. identify the pattern (iambic or trochaic).

13. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• Poems are said to rhyme when the last word of two
or more lines has the same ending sound:
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
• Conventionally, rhyme has often been used to mark the
end of the line (which also makes the poem easier to
memorise). When rhyme is used within the line, it is
called internal rhyme:
Her breath was strang, her hair was lang
(Anonymous ballad, Kemp Owyne)
• Rhymes are identified by the letters of the alphabet.
The pattern they create is called a rhyme scheme.
10. Sound devices: rhyme

14. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
11. Blank verse
• A common form based on iambic pentameter is
blank verse.
• The use of blank verse achieves extreme flexibility,
almost giving poetry the quality of everyday speech.
This is why it is often found in Elizabethan drama,
for example in Macbeth by Shakespeare.
Blank verse lines are unrhymed

15. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• If a line ends in the middle of a phrase and the meaning
break comes in the next line, we call this a run-on line
or use the French word enjambement:
So the company of men led a careless life,
All was well with them: until One began
To encompass evil, an enemy from hell.
(Beowulf)
12. Sound devices: run-on line

16. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• Lines are usually end-stopped. This is when the
end of a line coincides with a grammatical pause,
usually marked by a punctuation mark.
13. Sound devices: end-stopped line

17. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• It is a pause, usually in the middle of a line and
usually shown by a punctuation mark.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)
14. Sound devices: caesura

18. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• The repetition of the same vowel sound can ‘colour’
part of a poem with that vowel quality. This device is
called assonance.
He was sad at heart,
Unsettled yet ready, sensing his death.
(Beowulf)
• See how the line is permeated with the /e/ sound, which
creates a sense of doom. Beowulf’s mood recalls the
mood of tragic heroes.
15. Sound devices: assonance

19. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• The repetition of the same initial consonant sound
in consecutive words or words which are close together,
is called alliteration.
Grendel they called this cruel spirit,
the fell and fen his fastness was,
the march his haunt.
(Beowulf)
• Sometimes the alliteration can come in the middle
or at the end of words too. It can help create the tone of
the poem or affect the regularity of rhythm.
16. Sound devices: alliteration

20. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
Onomatopoeia
refers
to a word whose sound illustrates its meaning.
crack
screech
bang
snuffle
17. Sound devices: onomatopoeia

21. Poetry and sound devices
Performer Heritage
• Phrases or lines may be repeated in the course of a
poem to create a musical effect. This device is called
repetition and sometimes refrain. Refrains often
come in ballads as in the question repeated at the
beginning of every stanza.
O where ha’ you been, Lord Randal my son?
And where ha’ you been, my handsome young man?
18. Sound devices: repetition