Home › Glossary › Letter E

Enjambement

French
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The continuation of a sentence or phrase beyond the end of a verse line without a pause, creating tension between syntactic and metric structure. A fundamental resource of rhythmic expressivity.

Detailed Definition
Enjambement is one of the most powerful rhythmic resources in French poetry, created when the syntactic unit refuses to coincide with the metric unit of the line, flowing across the line boundary without pause. This creates a productive tension between two organizing structures: the metric regularity of the verse and the natural flow of syntax and meaning. Classical French poetry restricted enjambement severely; the Romantics liberated it as a vehicle of expressive freedom. Hugo uses it dramatically to create surprise, emphasis, and momentum. Modern and contemporary poets exploit it to create ambiguity, speed, and the sense of thought in motion.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hugo's famous enjambement in Hernani, "Serait-ce déjà lui? C'est bien à l'escalier // Dérobé," caused a scandal at its 1830 premiere because the overflow of syntax across the line boundary violated classical decorum, making enjambement itself a political act of Romantic liberation; Apollinaire removes all punctuation from Alcools, leaving enjambement as the primary device organizing the reader's negotiation of line boundaries and syntactic units, creating a continuous flow that mirrors modern consciousness; In Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre," enjambement propels the long poem forward with the momentum of a boat in flood, the syntax overflowing its metric banks just as the boat overflows the rivers it describes; A student learning enjambement should first write a poem in strict end-stop, then rewrite it with enjambement, experiencing how the overflow of syntax creates momentum, surprise, and a different relationship between the poem's sonic rhythm and its meaning; Verlaine's enjambements in the Romances sans paroles create the sense of thought dissolving at the line's edge and reforming in the next line, matching his aesthetic of suggestion and musical flow over declamatory statement; The history of enjambement in French poetry is a history of the struggle between the two organizing principles of verse: the metric line as a unit of rhythm versus the syntactic phrase as a unit of meaning, with different periods and poets taking different positions in that structural tension.
Additional Notes
Enjambement disrupts the coincidence between syntactic completion and line ending, creating forward motion, suspense, or expressive dislocation. French classical poetry often treated excessive enjambment cautiously, while later poets exploited it more freely. Students should read aloud to detect tension between visual and grammatical boundaries. Compare with rejet and contre-rejet for finer distinctions. Enjambement is central to understanding how verse differs from prose, since lineation actively shapes interpretation rather than merely formatting language.
Also Known As
Run-on line
Skip to main content