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CLASSICAL SCANSION — MACRON AND BREVE The original marks for scansion came from the quantitative meter of classical prosody where long syllables were marked –, and short syllables were marked ⌣. CLASSICAL SYSTEM ADOPTED TO ENGLISH — MACRON AND BREVE In the accentual prosody of English verse, these marks are still sometimes used to represent stressed and unstressed syllables. However, this robs them of their still potentially useful role in marking quantity (that is, the duration of syllables). Harvey Gross criticizes Herbert Grierson for his use of this 'inappropriate' notation. ICTUS AND BREVE Fussell, Turco, and Williams all use the ictus for stressed syllables, and the classical breve for unstressed syllables. Corn describes this as a notation which evolved from the classical notation. Corn goes on to state that the most common approach adopted for marking fine gradations of stress has been to add the symbol \ for 'intermediate stress'. Turco's version of this is to use a dot (·) to indicate the middle syllable in a string of three unstressed syllables has been 'promoted' to a ''scondary'' or weaker stress. ICTUS AND X Baldwin regards the use of the ictus (or slash) and x notation as 'normal', and argues for its benefits. By avoiding the macron and breve traditionally associated with the quantity (length) of syllables, ictus and x notation avoids possible confusions; it also has the advantage of being easily typed. This notation is used by, for example, Steele, and some less specialist books. This is the notation used in the '' Princeton Encyclopedia Of Poetry And Poetics .'' ROBERT BRIDGES' ACCENTUAL PROSODY See Also: Bridges' Prosody of Accentual Verse In developing a prosody for accentual verse, Robert Bridges classifies the following types of syllable: TRAGER-SMITH NOTATION The linguists George Trager and Henry Lee Smith described a four-stress system in their ''An Outline of English Structure,'' (1951). Hobsbaum describes and uses the system. Corn describes this system as "a little confusing to the eye" and prefers to use a numerical system such as Jespersen's original four-stress system (see below). Robert Wallace (poet) , in his controversial 1993 essay ' Meter In English ,' asserted that "We should ''never'' use four degrees of speech stress for scanning." His objections include that any four-stress system abolishes the Spondee , and that Trager-Smith, for example, is "too much machinery ... to keep track of". JESPERSEN'S SYSTEM In 1900, Otto Jespersen in his "Notes on Metre" was the first to use a four-stress system.. He used the numbers 1 to 4, to indicate varying degrees of stress: strong, half-strong, half-weak, and weak. CORN'S THREE-STRESS NUMERICAL SYSTEM Corn uses a simple numerical notation, much like Jespersen, with 1 representing the weakest syllable, and 3 indicating the heaviest stress. He argues that in Jespersen's system the half-strong and the half-weak are the hardest to distinguish, and should be merged. ATTRIDGE'S SINGLE-LINE SCANSION Attridge defines a fairly complicated and descriptive notation: LANIER'S MUSICAL NOTATION This has not always been viewed kindly. For example Vladimir Nabokov in his ''Notes On Prosody'' says: "In my casual perusals, I have of course slammed shut without further ado any such works on English prosody in which I glimpsed a crop of musical notes." (pages 3 – 4). STEELE'S MOUNTAIN RANGE NOTATION NOTES |
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