[Mark Allinson]

Rather than risk the de-railing of Allen’s dactylic hexameter currently on TDE, I thought I would start a thread in “Drills”.

There are a few of us here (Maryann, Rose, Frank, myself and others) who have tried our hand at this meter. And perhaps there are others (like Allen) who would like to explore its possibilities.

This thread below, on A.D.Hope’s hexameters, is where I started a few years back.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...light=dactylic

The first point, as Tim notes on that thread, is that foot-scansion is an inappropriate tool for analysis. This is an accentual meter where I.P. rules no longer apply. There may well be, for example, 3, 4 or even more unstressed syllables in a row in this form. So when we speak of “dactyls” what we really mean is a predominating “dactylic pattern”.

The point I would like to emphasise is that the rules governing classical dac-hex in Greek or Latin, while interesting to know, are also likely to be inappropriate in an English context.

There is little point in being strictly faithful to Homeric rules, for instance, if the result In English simply doesn’t work.

And there is no point in saying that something which DOES work in English is an “illegal” move in the classical context. To me, what we should be trying to do is make the form viable in English, rather than insisting on maintaining the rules of classical prosody.

Another important question we might explore is: Do you think the form has any application or value today? In other words, what do readers (as distinct from poets) make of the form?

So let’s play with dac-hex – examples (yours or others), issues and questions all welcome.