Trochaic octameter

Description and uses

The best known work in trochaic octameter is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", which uses five lines of trochaic octameter followed by a "short" half line (in reality, 7 beats). By the end of the poem, the latter half line takes on the qualities of a refrain.

Another well-known work is Banjo Paterson's "Clancy of the Overflow", which uses four lines of trochaic octameter for each verse throughout. Other examples are Robert Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Alfred Tennyson's Locksley Hall, and Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay. Lines in these poems are catalectic (' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' x ' ).

A line of trochaic octameter is eight of these in a row:

We can scan this with a ''''x'''' mark representing an unstressed syllable and a ''''/'''' mark representing a stressed syllable. In this notation a line of trochaic octameter would look like this:

The following first verse from "The Raven" shows the use of trochaic octameter. Note the heavy use of dactyls in the second and fifth line, which help to emphasize the more regular lines, and the use of strong accents to end the second, fourth and fifth lines, reinforcing the rhyme:

We can notate the scansion of this as follows:

The following first two lines from "Womanizer" by Britney Spears also show trochaic octameter.

We can notate the scansion of this as follows:

It becomes more important in another section of the chorus, in which words are repeated so as to maintain the meter.

In other literatures

Trochaic octameter is popular in Polish and Czech literatures. It is because the main stress in Polish falls regularly on the penultimate syllable and in Czech on the first syllable. So all Polish and Czech two-syllable words are trochaic.

: Niedostępna ludzkim oczom, że nikt po niej się nie błąka, : W swym bezpieczu szmaragdowym rozkwitała w bezmiar łąka :: (Bolesław Leśmian, Ballada bezludna)

: Stojím v šeru na skalině, o niž v pěnu, déšť a kouř : duníc, ječíc rozbíjí se nesmírného vodstva bouř. :: (Svatopluk Čech, Písně otroka)

References

References

1. [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43777 Robert Browning, A Toccata of Galuppi's at Poetry Foundation.]
2. [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45362 Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall at Poetry Foundation.]
3. Moore, Steven. (2015). "William Gaddis: Expanded Edition". Bloomsbury Publishing.
4. Wiktor J. Darasz, Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim, Kraków 2003, p. 73 (in Polish).
5. [https://archive.org/details/poetikajakoztoae01durduoft Josef Durdík, Poetika jakožto aesthetika umení básnického, pp. 374-375 (in Czech).]
6. Josef Brukner, Jiří Filip, Poetický slovník, Mladá fronta, Praha 1997, pp. 339-342 (in Czech).