Meter

Meter

The Glossary of Literary Terms by Abrams & Harpham (201210: 217, s.v. meter) gives the following definition:

“Meter is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech sounds of a language. There are four main types of meter in European languages:”

1. quantitative: “established by the relative duration of the utterance of a syllable, and consisted of recurrent patterns of long and short syllables” (e.g. classical Greek and Latin)
2. syllabic: “depending on the number of syllables within a line of verse, without regard to the fall of the stresses” (e.g. French, other Romance languages)
3. accentual: “depending on the number of stressed syllables within a line, without regard to the fall of the stresses” (e.g. Old English, other older Germanic languages)
4. accentual-syllabic: “combining the features of the two preceding types, [...] metric units consist of a recurrent pattern of stresses on a recurrent number of syllables” (“predominant meter of English poetry since the fourteenth century”)

Tarlinskaja (1976: 2) provides a definition with a slightly different focus, which is set on an abstract level above the texts. Its addition is helpful to complement the above-quoted classification:

“[M]eter is the ordered alternation of strong and weak syllabic positions or places, abstracted from the accentual structure of a concrete verse text (or texts). The strong position is called the ictus (conventionally designated by [–]), the weak position is called the non-ictus (conventionally designated [∪]). The strong position equals one syllable, the weak position 1-2 syllables. The ictuses are usually filled up by phonologically marked syllables (long ones as in ancient Greek or Latin verse, or stressed ones, as in English, German or Russian verse), while non-ictuses – by phonologically non-marked syllables (short or unstressed). Repeated combinations of an ictus and a non-ictus in a metrical sequence are known as feet. [...]

Five meters may be distinguished, depending on the order of ictuses and non-ictuses within the foot and the number of non-ictic syllables:”

• binaries: the trochee [–∪|–∪|–∪...] , the iamb [∪–|∪–|∪–...]
• ternaries: the dactyl [–∪∪|–∪∪|–∪∪...] , the amphibrach [∪–∪|∪–∪|∪–∪...] , the anapest [∪∪–|∪∪–|∪∪–...]

For a clarification of the connection between meter, phrasal stress, ictus, non-ictus and stress, have a look at this diagram.

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