Resolution (meter)

Resolution is generally found in Greek lyric poetry and in Greek and Roman drama, most frequently in comedy.

It should not be confused with a biceps, which is a point in a meter which can equally be two shorts or a long, as is found in the dactylic hexameter. The biceps is freely able to be two shorts or a long, while resolution, particularly in tragedy, can only occur within very restricted situations. Two resolved longa in the same line is unusual, for instance, while a biceps that is two shorts can freely be followed by another biceps that is two shorts. Also, when two shorts are substituted for a long, they are almost always within the same word-unit.

One example from iambic trimeter:

τίνων τὸ σεμνὸν ὄνομ' ἂν εὐξαίμην κλύων;

tínōn tò semnòn ónom' àn euxaímēn klúōn?

| u – u – | u uu u – | – – u – |

"Whose sacred name would I pray to when I hear it?"

(Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 41)

Here the resolved pair is the word ὄνομ', so the resolution stays within the same word-unit.

In the alliterative verse tradition of the ancient and medieval Germanic languages, resolution was also an important feature.

In this tradition, if a stressed syllable comprises a short root vowel followed by only one consonant followed by an unstressed vowel (i.e. '(-)CVCV(-)) these two syllables were in most circumstances counted as only one syllable.[1]

For example, in lines 224b-28 of the Old English poem Beowulf, the following emboldened syllables resolve, counting as only one metrical syllable each:

Rsolution is also found in modern English verse, for example in the nursery rhyme:

Húmpty | Dúmpty | sát on a | wáll[2]

Here the rhythm consists of four trochaic feet, the last one catalectic (i.e. missing the final syllable). In the third foot, the two short syllables "sat on" correspond to a single long syllable in the other feet.

The following verse similarly has four stressed positions, and contains two resolutions:

The | Ówl and the | Pússy-Cat | wént to | séa[3]

In these lines of John Masefield there are again four main stresses. The first two feet each contain two resolutions:

Dírty British | cóaster with a | sált-caked | smóke-stack]

Bútting through the | Chánnel in the | mád March | dáys[4]

In the lines from T. S. Eliot below, there are likewise four main stresses, but with a more complex pattern of resolutions, reflecting the rhythms of ordinary speech:

Whén the train | stárts and the | pássengers are | séttled

to | frúit, peri-| ódicals and | búsiness | létters[5]

• Iambic Trimeter: Resolutions