id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
grbs-17015	Sansom, Stephen A.; Fifield, David	Epic Rhythm: Metrical Shapes in Greek Hexameter	2024	23	.pdf	application/pdf	8630	381	63	Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 64 (2024) 350–377 353 in oral poetics suggest that rhythmic patterns can serve literary functions, such as to characterize dramatic passages.7 And con- temporary theorists of transhistorical poetics have explored how the rhythms of metrical verse “afford an organizing of temporal experience … in the moment of reading,” coordinating aesthetic and social regularity.8 Metrical shapes contribute to the rhythm of epic in what is known as the “inner metric” of hexameter.9 As O’Neill has shown, metrical shapes frequent or “localize in” only a few of all possible metrical positions.10 Porter argues that this regularity generates “patterns of expectancy” that poets can “distort” to create “tension between what is expected and what is actually spoken.”11 2. Density of unexpected metrical shapes For the purpose of analysis, we will call a shape/sedes com- bination “unexpected” when it has an expectancy z-score less than or equal to −2.0; that is, the number of occurrences of the shape at that sedes is at least 2 standard deviations lower than the weighted mean number of occurrences at any sedes.	cache/grbs-17015.pdf	txt/grbs-17015.txt