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The name for the basic unit used in the scansion

Most early poets writing in English were part of a tradition that embraced Latinate metrical patterns.

Even a rudimentary understanding of prosody allows for a more dynamic understanding of the phonetic patterns of English poetry written before the twentieth century.

However, there are still several reasons why studying prosody can be of value to the student or reader of verse: 2 Metrical taxonomies seem archaic and obsolete considering the general abandonment of Latin models in the post-Neoclassical era. These models systematically define Latin acoustic patterns by constructing metrical taxonomies. Why study prosody, particularly after the meteoric rise of “free verse” in the early twentieth century largely replaced the metrical formalism of earlier poetry written in English?Įnglish prosody has long been based on earlier Latin models.

To put it simply, students of prosody study how poetry formulates sounds and what effects those sounds produce. It is the study of how the sounds of words functioning in a metrical network can affect a reader’s understanding and reaction to a poetical work. The study of prosody investigates how verse creates, maintains, destabilizes, and even avoids the acoustic patterns of language. as this relates to versification (more generally) the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry. The branch of knowledge which deals with the forms of metrical composition, and formerly also with the pronunciation of words, esp. However, when prosody is discussed, particularly in modern academic settings, what is usually meant is something more in line with the OED‘s technical definition of the word: In 1910, George Saintsbury called it “the study of the constitution of verse.” 1 By his definition, prosody is the study of all aspects of the making of verse itself.

4 The Four Basic English Feet (and two others).