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hard caesura

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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

A strong pause within a poetic line, often marked by punctuation

Detailed Definition
A hard caesura is a strong, definite pause within a poetic line, typically marked by punctuation such as a period, semicolon, colon, dash, or comma. This break creates a clear division within the line, often separating complete syntactic units or contrasting ideas. Hard caesura affects rhythm, pacing, and emphasis, allowing poets to create dramatic pauses, mark rhetorical shifts, or balance line structure against sentence structure. The placement of caesura is crucial to the line's movement and meaning, and varying caesura position across lines contributes to rhythmic variation and complexity within formal verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hard caesura: Strong mid-line breaks marked by punctuation; Pope's caesuras dividing heroic couplets; Distinct pauses within lines; Anglo-Saxon strong medial breaks
Additional Notes
hard caesura|A strong, deliberate pause in the middle of a line, often marked by punctuation; adds weight and rhythmical disruption.
Also Known As
strong pause emphatic break rhythmic halt
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