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A caesura, in poetry, is an audible pause that breaks up a line of verse. Any sort of punctuation which causes a pause in speech, such as a comma, semicolon, or full stop, indicates a caesura. A caesura is also used in musical notation as a complete cessation of musical time. Image File history File links Blue_question_mark. ...
Verse is a writing that uses meter as its primary organisational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. ...
The term comma has various uses; comma is the name used for one of the punctuation symbols: , The term comma is also used in music theory for various small intervals that arise as differences between approximately equal intervals. ...
A semicolon ( ; ) is a punctuation mark. ...
A full stop or period (sometimes stop, full point or dot), is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and several other languages. ...
Caesurae figure prominently in Greek and Latin versification, especially in the heroic verse form, dactylic hexameter. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...
Dactyllic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter) is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. ...
Please note that in this article, "||" denotes a caesura. The two vertical lines are not original to any of the texts quoted, but only serve to show the position of the audible pause.
Examples
Latin Caesuras feature prominently in Latin poetry, such as in Virgil's opening line of the Aeneid: Latin poetry was a major part of Latin literature during the height of the Latin language. ...
A sculpture of Virgil, probably from the 1st century AD. For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ...
The Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: ; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced — the title is Greek in form: genitive case Aeneidos): is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy where he...
- Arma virumque cano, || Troiae qui primus ab oris
- ("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . .")
This line displays an obvious caesura in its approximate middle, its usual position. The caesura can move around freely in the lines of dactylic hexameter. Technically, in dactylic hexameter, a caesura occurs anytime when the ending of a word does not coincide with the beginning or end of a metrical foot; it is usually only called one when the ending also coincides with an audible pause in speaking the line. The ancient elegiac couplet form of the Greeks and Romans contained a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of pentameter; the pentameter often displayed an even more obvious caesura: Elegiac couplets consist of alternating lines of dactylic hexameter and pentameter: two dactyls followed by a long syllable, a caesura, then two more dactyls followed by a long syllable. ...
In poetry, a pentameter is a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet: Be what you can if thus your heart so deem, For more the man will less the foible seem. ...
- Cynthia prima fuit; || Cynthia finis erit.
- ("Cynthia was the first; Cynthia will be the last" — Horace)
Horace, as imagined by Anton von Werner Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (December 8, 65 BC - November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. ...
Old English The caesura was even more important to Old English verse than it was to Latin or Greek poetry. In Latin or Greek poetry, the caesura could be suppressed for effect in any line at will. In the alliterative verse that is shared by most of the oldest Germanic languages, the caesura is an ever-present and necessary part of the verse form itself. Consider the opening line of Beowulf: Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ...
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse. ...
Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. ...
The first page of Beowulf This article is about the epic poem. ...
- Hwæt! we Gar-Dena || on geardagum
- ("Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore. . .")
Middle English But compare that with some lines from William Langland's Piers Plowman: Langlands Dreamer: from an illuminated initial in a Piers Plowman manuscript held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman. ...
Page from a 14th century Psalter, showing drolleries on the right margin and a plowman at the bottom. ...
- I loked on my left half || as þe lady me taughte
- And was war of a womman || worþeli ycloþed.
- ("I looked on my left side, as the lady told me to, and perceived an expensively dressed woman.")
Classification A masculine caesura is one that occurs after a stressed syllable; a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable.
Caesurae can occur in later forms of verse; in these, though, they are usually optional. The so-called ballad metre, or the common metre of the hymnodists, is usually thought of as a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter, but it can also be considered a line of heptameter with a fixed caesura at the fourth foot. Considering the break as a caesura in these verse forms, rather than a beginning of a new line, explains how sometimes multiple caesurae can be found in this verse form (from the limerick Tom o' Bedlam): A ballad is a story, usually a narrative or poem, in a song. ...
Common metre, abbreviated C.M., is an iambic metre consisting of four lines of length 8,6,8,6. ...
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. ...
An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ...
In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet: And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea (Anapaest tetrameter) (Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib) You who are bent and bald and blind (Iambic tetrameter, except for the first foot which is a trochee) (W...
In poetry, a trimeter is a metre of three metrical feet per line - example: When here the spring we see, Fresh green upon the tree. ...
Heptameter is one or more lines of verse containing seven metrical feet (usually fourteen or twenty-one syllables). ...
A limerick is a five-line poem with a strict meter, popularized by Edward Lear and Charlie Murphy. ...
Tom O Bedlam is the name of a critically acclaimed[1] anonymous poem written circa 1600 (it can be definitely dated back to 1634[1]) about a Bedlamite. ...
- From the hag and hungry goblin || that into rags would rend ye,
- And the spirits that stand || by the naked man || in the Book of Moons, defend ye!
In later and freer verse forms, the caesura is optional. It can, however, be used for rhetorical effect, as in Alexander Pope's line: Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. ...
- To err is human; || to forgive, divine.
Caesurae can be classed into three further categories - initial, medial and terminal. This very simply corresponds to the point at which the break occurs in the line: initial caesura describes a break at the beginning of a line, medial denotes a pause in the middle and terminal occurs at the very end.
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