What is Prosody in Literature?

Prosody is the sound of a text.

Words read aloud make sounds based on their syllables—those sounds are the work of literature’s prosody.

Prosody has two basic modes—verse and prose. 

Scanning a text means reading it to listen for verse or prose. Verse has meter, while prose does not have meter. The “meter” of something is its measure, and in verse the language has been measured out in syllables. Prose has not been measured out in syllables. When we scan during close reading, we are listening for how the syllables sound.

Verse typically (though not always) features line breaks, and it often rhymes. Whether the syllables have been placed in meter or not, alone, determines if the literature is written in verse or prose. Prose poetry (sometimes ironically called “free verse”) has no meter, but it may have line breaks and even rhyme.

Read on to learn how to close read for prosody, or click here to move on to learn about Genres.

Three ways of arranging syllables in verse give us three types of meter: accentual meter, syllabic meter, and accentual-syllabic meter.

Listen to the poem “She Walks in Beauty,” by Lord Byron, while reading it for a good example of accentual-syllabic verse:

Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” is Accentual-Syllabic Verse

She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 
And all that’s best of dark and bright 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes; 
Thus mellowed to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impaired the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress, 
Or softly lightens o’er her face; 
Where thoughts serenely sweet express, 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, 
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 
But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 
A heart whose love is innocent!

To scan a poem, draw an ictus   ˊ  over each stressed syllable (placing it over the vowel). Next, draw a breve  ˘ over each unstressed syllable (also, over the vowel). After scanning several lines, determine whether there is an accentual-syllabic pattern. If so, divide each line of the poem into feet by placing vertical lines after each foot.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

     ˘     ˊ        ˘      ˊ        ˘   ˊ          ˘     ˊ  
She walks in beauty, like the night
  
˘        ˊ        ˘        ˊ          ˘          ˊ     ˘      ˊ  
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
  
˘        ˊ        ˘         ˊ      ˘      ˊ       ˘          ˊ  
And all that’s best of dark and bright

      ˘    ˊ       ˘    ˊ      ˘     ˊ         ˘     ˊ  
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

     ˘     ˊ         ˘      ˊ         ˘   ˊ            ˘    ˊ  
She walks| in beau|ty, like| the night
  
˘        ˊ         ˘        ˊ           ˘          ˊ      ˘      ˊ
Of cloud|less climes| and star|ry skies;
  
˘        ˊ          ˘         ˊ      ˘      ˊ        ˘           ˊ
And all| that’s best| of dark| and bright

      ˘    ˊ       ˘    ˊ       ˘     ˊ           ˘     ˊ
Meet in| her as|pect and| her eyes;

Notice how Lord Byron arranged each line in an unstressed-then-stressed pattern. Since we are listening for the rhythm of the syllables alone, feet may fall right in the middle of some of the words. When scanning, we listen for syllables, not whole words.

Common Feet in Accentual-Syllabic Verse

The common types of feet in English are iambs  ˘ ˊ or trochees   ˊ ˘. Some English poems feature anapests  ˘ ˘ ˊand dactyls ˊ ˘ ˘. 

An iambic foot is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Lord Byron wrote iambic lines when composing “She Walks in Beauty.”

Now, notice how many feet he put in each line. There are four iambs in each line of his poem.

We call one foot per line of verse “monometer,” two is “dimeter,” three is “trimeter,” four is “tetrameter,” five is “penta-,” six is “hexa-,” then “hepta-,” then “octa-,” and so on. For example, we would call a line of eight syllables arranged in iambs “iambic tetrameter” (four iambs). 

“She Walks in Beauty” is a verse poem written in iambic tetrameter.

Robert Frost also used iambic tetrameter when he wrote “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” When scanned, the first line looks like this:

       ˘          ˊ              ˘       ˊ      ˘      ˊ       ˘       ˊ
Whose woods| these are| I think| I know.

Lord Tennyson, on the other hand, uses dactyls to echo the sound of the horses galloping in “The Charge of the Light Brigade:”

   ˊ       ˘      ˘     ˊ       ˘       ˘
Cannon to| right of them,

   ˊ       ˘     ˘     ˊ      ˘      ˘
Cannon to| left of them

   ˊ       ˘    ˘        ˊ       ˘       ˘
Cannon in| front of them

There are two dactyls in each line of Tennyson’s verse, so he is writing in dactylic dimeter.

Unusual Verse Feet

One rarely finds three unstressed syllables in a row in English. Similarly, two or more stressed syllables in a row would indicate a departure from ordinary English. 

The unusual foot made of two stressed syllables is called a spondee ˊ ˊ. The rare foot made of unstressed syllables is called a pyrrhic ˘ ˘. Spondees and pyrrhics occasionally appear in iambic or trochaic verse, changing the rhythm for emphasis. 

Poets may also invert a foot, interrupting an iambic line with a trochee or vice versa. Close reading to understand how verse prosody works in a text is important for learning to think like a reader.

Rhyme

Most, but not all, verse prosody also rhymes. Masculine rhymes consist of a single, stressed syllable: cat / hat. Feminine rhyme, features an unstressed syllable following a stressed one: candle / handle.

End rhymes appear at the end of lines, while internal rhyme occurs within the line. Listen to hear how Edgar Allan Poe uses both internal rhyme and end rhyme, placed in italics below for emphasis, in “The Raven:”

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
            This it is and nothing more.”

Line Breaks

Of course, discussing meter and rhyme in terms of their relationship to the line in a poem begs a question: what is a “line,” anyway? “The poetic line,” writes poet Robert Pinsky in his book Singing School, “is a means of performing energy and balance in writing. As in other kinds of performance, or in editing a movie, the relation between pause and movement is essential to writing in lines.”¹

Emily Dickinson uses a line break after a dependent clause before completing one of her most famous images with the second line, a devastating independent clause. She also emphasizes her line breaks with her characteristic dashes:

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—

Lines such as these, which end at a natural break in the grammar, are end-stopped. The end-stopped line usually ends after a complete clause or phrase.

As opposed to the end-stopped line, poets use enjambment in order to change the relationship between what Pinsky calls “pause and movement.” Enjambed lines do not end at a natural break in the grammar, but spill over into the following line.

Consider how Margaret Atwood uses enjambment to convey pause and movement, energy and balance, in these lines from her poem “February.” The second, third, and fourth lines are all enjambed. To increase the energy, she also plays with internal and end rhyme (placed in italics here to highlight them):

In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

Notice, for example, how the line break after “It’s his” creates an ambiguity between whether the cat owns “my head” or simply his “way of telling.” Enjambment makes this change in meaning possible. 

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Although the syllables are not arranged in verse, Whitman uses anaphora, repeating the phrase “have you” at the beginning of lines and phrases, which organizes the lines into a kind of chant. 

Whitman’s revolution in prose poetry, sometimes oxymoronically called free verse, spread throughout the English speaking world until prose poetry became the dominant prosody in literature in English. 

Whitman’s style influenced modern poets writing in other languages, as well, as is evident, for example, in Pablo Neruda’s Canto General.

While contemporary authors overwhelmingly write in prose for narrative, exposition, and drama, they may use verse or prose for any genre.