How to scan poetry • hexameter • Ovid Amores III.2 • Ranieri's 5-stage scanning exercise (Patreon)

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Verse Scanning Exercise Instructions

Stage 1: monotone

Stage 2: ditonic inflexion

Stage 3: polytonal spoken inflexion over ditonic base

Stage 4: pseudo-spoken inflexion

Stage 5: recitation for performance

Purpose of the Verse Scanning Exercise: to acquire the natural rhythm of the Latin language (and thus its poetry) by damping the interference of one's native language tendencies through systematically deconstruction of the line into its most basic and important elements, rebuilding on top of this foundation the elements of normal speech.

N.B. Master each stage before proceeding to the next. Mastery of Stage 4 is required; mastery of Stage 5 is encouraged.

Stages explained

Stage 1: monotone (purpose: to divorce the verse from native language interference, permitting concentration on the language's most important building blocks: long and short syllables)

- determine the correct syllable scansion of a given text from poetry by underlining the  long syllables with straight lines and the short syllables with curved lines

- tap out the rhythm

- produce the rhythm vocally in monotone with a singing syllable such as "la" or "ba"

- sing the line of poetry in monotone, maintaining precise rhythm; a metronome may help 

Stage 2: ditonic inflexion (purpose: to reintroduce the second most important lexical feature of Latin, namely the stressed syllables, but using pitch instead of loudness; this helps the practitioner to further divorce the long syllables from the emphasized/stressed/accented syllables)

- add acute accent marks to the stressed syllables of the text

- as in stage 1, sing the line of poetry, but on the accented syllables raise the pitch by  some interval (such as a third, but any will do that is comfortable)

Stage 3: polytonal spoken inflexion over ditonic base (purpose: to reintroduce the natural prosody of speech while still artificially raising the pitch on every accented syllable)

- as in stage 2, raise the pitch on the accented syllables, but allow the melody of the voice  to flow as natural speech between highs and lows

- remember always to maintain strict long and short syllable rhythm; nothing is more  important

Stage 4: pseudo-spoken inflexion (purpose: to recite each line with normal spoken melody)

- instead of raising the pitch on every accented syllable, allow normal lexical stress (which is not necessarily based on pitch, but is instead an increase in loudness) to take over

- maintain correct syllable quantity at all times, with robotic adherence to the rhythm

- each line should sound more or less like normal speech, expect that all natural pauses,  either based on punctuation, or interpretation by the practitioner, will be ignored

Stage 5: recitation for performance (purpose: to perform the piece for an audience)

- rather than reciting each line of poetry as a strict rhythmical unit, break the text into  phrases according to the natural pauses of narrative

- ensure each phrase is rhythmically correct

- techniques include pauses at punctuation, and no pause at the end of a line if the phrase  continues semantically into the next line

The Verse Scanning Exercise is to be utilized for all poetry until Stage 4 can be attained at sight for any poem.