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Poesy, Prosody, Essays and Critique

Month: May 2024

  • The Dunciad—Part 1: Book I—verses 11, 12

    11  Dulness o’er all possess’d her ancient right,12  Daughter of Chaos and eternal night: If we look at this couplet with the intent of examining its iambicity, we find both unwanted promotion and demotion of speech stress conflicting with metrical accent. Thus we are tempted to say that this couplet is not pure iambic pentameter.…