Trochaic Substitution
In a line of verse that normally employs iambic meter, trochaic substitution describes the replacement of an iamb by a trochee.
The following line from John Keats' To Autumn is straightforward iambic pentameter:
- To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
Using '°' for a weak syllable, '/' for a strong syllable, and '|' for divisions between feet it can be represented as:
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| To | swell | | | the | gourd, | | | and | plump | | | the | ha- | | | zel | shells |
The opening of a sonnet by John Donne demonstrates troachaic substitution of the first foot ("Batter"):
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| Bat- | ter | | | my | heart | | | three- | per- | | | soned | God, | | | for | you | | |
Donne uses an inversion (DUM da instead of da DUM) in the first foot of the first line to stress the key verb, "batter", and then sets up a clear iambic pattern with the rest of the line
Shakespeare's hamlet includes a well-known example:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'
Here, that is emphasized rather than is, which would be a wrenched, or unnatural accent. The first syllable of Whether is also stressed, making it a trochaic beginning.
Read more about this topic: Inversion (prosody)
Famous quotes containing the words trochaic and/or substitution:
“A tattered copy of Johnson’s large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to “make up” verses.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with sublime propriety God is described as saying, I A—.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)