English Literature / Unit 1 ENL 0013 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Scanning a Line
The idea
Scansion is the practice of working out a line's metrical pattern, and in English it means marking stressed and unstressed syllables. Do it in four steps. First, say the line aloud at normal speed and mark the syllables that take the natural stress, the way a dictionary stresses "be-HOLD" or "DIS-tant." Second, look for the repeating unit: if most pairs run light then heavy, the foot is the iamb; if heavy then light, the trochee; if two lights precede each stress, the anapest. Third, count the feet and name the line, so five iambs make iambic pentameter. Fourth, note the variations, such as a trochee in the first foot or a spondee in the middle, because a single substitution does not change the meter's name. Sonnet seventy-three opens "That time of year thou mayst in me behold": five rising feet, iambic pentameter.
In practice
Say it, mark it, find the unit, count, name.
Where people slip
Scan by how the words are spoken, not by how you expect the meter to go. A line keeps its meter's name through occasional substitutions, so one reversed foot does not make an iambic poem trochaic.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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