Re: Fave Conlangs WAS: Silindion

>    Speaking of which, does anyone understand what
> caesura and hemistychs
> are, and can you explain it to me? I think
> they'll be very important in the
> epic metrics.
>
Caesura is a structurally important pause in a line of
poetry. This can be marked by punctuation, a grammatical
boundary, or even internal sound-structures (line-internal
rhyme or the like). Usually in speaking of caesura, a
critic/analyst will be referring to a break in a line with
predictable meter, but I'd think that the term could even be
fruitfully applied to a form like haiku, in which the three
lines are usually split into two somewhat independent
sections by (in English) a colon at the end of either the
first or second line. If the caesura falls in the middle of
a line, it is referred to as "medial", toward the beginning
it is "initial" and toward the end it is "final".

Hemistich/stych is a half-line, usually defined by a caesura
(!) or some other significant boundary even if no pause is
present.

Beowulf and the Eddas (along with a lot of other epic
poetry) both make use of the caesura and the hemistich as
important structural underpinnings.

As per usual, there's a good chance that I'm completely
wrongheaded in my response--I'm no real scholar, just a very
curious person with insomnia.

------------
Paul Edson (conlang@twocannibals.com)

The amount of time between slipping on a banana peel and
hitting the ground with a sickening "thud": one
bananosecond.