Resolution (meter)

Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a long syllable with two short syllables.

Ancient Greek and Latin

Resolution is generally found in Greek lyric poetry and in Greek and Roman drama, most frequently in comedy.

It should not be confused with a biceps, which is a point in a meter which can equally be two shorts or a long, as is found in the dactylic hexameter. The biceps is freely able to be two shorts or a long, while resolution, particularly in tragedy, can only occur within very restricted situations. Two resolved longa in the same line is unusual, for instance, while a biceps that is two shorts can freely be followed by another biceps that is two shorts. Also, when two shorts are substituted for a long, they are almost always within the same word-unit.

One example from iambic trimeter:

τίνων τὸ σεμνὸν ὄνομ' ἂν εὐξαίμην κλύων;
tínōn tò semnòn ónom' àn euxaímēn klúōn?
| u – u – | u uu u – | – – u – |
"Whose sacred name would I pray to when I hear it?"
(Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 41)

Here the resolved pair is the word ὄνομ', so the resolution stays within the same word-unit.

Germanic alliterative verse

In the alliterative verse tradition of the ancient and medieval Germanic languages, resolution was also an important feature.

In this tradition, if a stressed syllable comprises a short root vowel followed by only one consonant followed by an unstressed vowel (i.e. '(-)CVCV(-)) these two syllables were in most circumstances counted as only one syllable.[1]

For example, in lines 224b-28 of the Old English poem Beowulf, the following emboldened syllables resolve, counting as only one metrical syllable each:

     Þanon up hraðe
Wedera lēode       on wang stigon,
sǣwudu sǣldon;       syrcan hrysedon,
gūðgewǣdo.       Gode þancedon
þæs þe him ȳþlāde       ēaðe wurdon.

       From there, upwards, swiftly
the people of the Weders       stepped onto land,
tied up sea-wood;       they shook their mail-coats,
battle-raiment.       They thanked God
that for them the sea-routes       turned out easy.

References
  1. Jun Terasawa, Old English Metre: An Introduction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 31-33.
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