pentameter

1. a verse line consisting of five metrical feet

2. (in classical prosody) a verse line consisting of two dactyls, one stressed syllable, two dactyls, and a final stressed syllable

3. designating a verse line consisting of five metrical feet

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Pentameter

in ancient prosody, a dactylic line formed by doubling the first hemistich of a hexameter; each of the two hemistichs consists of two and a half dactylic feet. The hemi-stichs are divided by a caesura, and the dactyls may be replaced by spondees only in the first hemistich. The metric scheme is .

The pentameter was used only in alternation with the hexameter, to form the elegaic couplet; in this form it was the basic meter of ancient elegies and epigrams. An example of a tonic rendition of an elegaic couplet whose second line is a pentameter follows (from a poem by A. S. Pushkin):

Slýshu umólknuvshii zvúk bozhéstvennoi éllinskoi réchi,

Stártsa velíkogo tén’ chúiu smushchë́nnoi dushói.

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References in periodicals archive

It is clear that in writing in couplets, however metrically "rough," Spenser was broadly coming much closer to the forms of the poets he was closely imitating and translating into English, who wrote stichic poetry that is grouped in irregular verse paragraphs, not stanzas.

Spenser out of his stanza

I have surveyed a variety of rhapsodic games, arguing that rhapsodes were competent at many levels of poetic performance: they could, for example, competitively recite memorized verses, improvise verses on the spot for elaboration, take up and leave off the narrative wherever they saw fit, as well as perform stichic improvisation in response to questions, riddles, etc.

Improvisation in Rhapsodic Performance

The final verse foot is always HH, which follows from the fact that the final metrical position is H in all stichic meter (ANCEPS), and it is likely that this puts pressure on the preceding foot not to end in a H.

The phonology of Classical Greek meter(*)

The terms used to describe the epic melodies, their modality, scale structure, cadential endings, motivic, stichic, strophic, or stanzaic forms, are borrowed from art music; they are not known to, nor do they have any meaning for the singer.

Music of South Slavic Epics from the Bihac Region of Bosnia

That is, whether it's quatrains, tercets, stichic lines.

An interview with Dave Smith

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