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 It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Enjambment

in prosody, placement of the syntactic pause or stop at a position other than the rhythmic pause at the end of a line, hemistich, or stanza.

In classical verse there are three kinds of enjambment: rejet is the placement of the end of a clause or sentence at the beginning of the following line, contre-rejet the placement of the beginning of a sentence at the end of the preceding line, and double-rejet the placement of the beginning of a sentence at the end of one line and its conclusion at the start of the following line.

When enjambments are used sparingly, they give a strong intonational emphasis to the parts of the sentence severed by the line’s division. If they are numerous, they produce an intonation so close to that of prose that it almost obscures the verse rhythm; this is particularly true in dramatic verse. Classicism avoided enjambment; romanticism and some poetic schools of the 20th century cultivated it. An example of enjambment from modern poetry can be seen in the following lines of M. Tsvetaeva:

It matters not to me among which
People—I shall be bristling like a captive
Lion, or from what circle of people
I shall be excluded—inevitably …

REFERENCE

Shengeli, G. Tekhnika stikha. Moscow, 1960.

M. L. GASPAROV

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

The breakdown of this boundary between the poet's world and the realm of the Mother and Child is achieved formally before the semantic resolution in the second tercet, when the poet's "desires have been fulfilled." Pushkin calls attention to the phrase, "Tvorets / Tebia mne nisposlal, tebia, moia Madona," beginning the sentence in the first line and in another example of enjambement, establishing a continuity between the creator and his gift.

"With no great quantity of paintings": Pushkin's polemic with Raphael in "Madona"

For these and other characteristics of oral versus literary style, such as the reduced frequency of enjambement in oral tradition, see David C.

An early Roman analogue for the 'shoe my foot' stanzas?

Maar die idee-inhoud word ook beinvloed deur reelbreuke: Ek het soms dae lank oor een enkele enjambement getob, veral by die Engels.

Bernard Odendaal in gesprek met Charl-Pierre Naude

Referring to a quote from Mazaleyrat, English says that "les incertitudes nees de l'emploi d'enjambements particulierement forts ...

English, Alan. Verlaine poete de l'indecidable. Etude de la versification verlainienne

121-3) The enjambement 'Ave, / Maria', lengthening the rhythm of the terzina, and the iteration of the verb 'cantando', with the prolonged smooth sound -ando, are probably meant to reproduce Piccarda's chant, like Philomel's 'Twit twit twit'.

Plurilingualism and the mind of Europe in T. S. Eliot and Dante

The fluidity of the strophe and the natural thematic progression in the two quatrains of the octave are further enhanced by the enjambement after the first hemistich of the third line.

Mosskaw / Moskva: Sumarokov's Translations of Fleming's Sonnets (1)

(5) Uit die ontleding van Du Ptessis se ander liedere word dit duidelik dat hy soms te veel waarde beg aan die versreel as eenheid, en dat hy daardeur die betekenis van die enjambement verskraal (Van der Mescht, 1987:21-24).

Die agtergrond en ontstaansgeskiedenis van Hubert du Plessis se Duitse en Franse liedere

There is even a kind of (serious) playfulness, in the rhythmic tilt of enjambement in the plain poems, as in the very outrageousness with which chunks of language from just about everywhere are cast against each other in the big pieces.

"Anxious fuchsia ocean": the accomplishment of Randolph Healy

(27) The sonnet's exclamatory tone prevents any notable structural manipulation; most lines are self-contained, with only one example of enjambement between lines five and six.

'D'invidia e D'amor Figlia si Ria': jealousy and the Italian renaissance

(128.) This phrase, complete with the enjambement, is also found in Nirala's most explicitly nationalist poem "Maharaj Sivaji ka Patra": charo kab ksatriyo ne apna bhag?--/ rahte pran--kati me krpan ke?

Diptych in verse: gender hybridity, language consciousness, and national identity in Nirala's "Jago Phir Ek Bar"