Scansion

Scansion is a way of pronouncing verse with an emphasised, even highlighting of all metrically strong positions, in which the rhythmic scheme sounds laid bare, outside natural speech intonation. As an analytical device, scansion allows one to establish the metre and measure of a work, to reveal the foot structure of the line and to record deviations from the scheme (pyrrhics, spondees, stress shifts). Scansion as an educational-research procedure must be distinguished from the actual performance of a poem, in which the metrical scheme only shows through the living rhythm rather than dictating a mechanical beating-out of stresses. The ability to scan is a basic skill of versification analysis, with which the description of the rhythmic organisation of a text begins.