Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 March 15

= March 15 =

Technical term - dramatic line with too few feet
Hey!

I'm writing an essay on Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and cannot remember or find the technical term for an unnaturally short line. The line in question (in the A-text) comes in Act 2 scene i, line 22, where the Evil Angel prompts: "No, Faustus; think of honor and wealth". Faustus's response is "Of wealth!/Why...". I know that a line that is too long is hypermetrical, but hypometrical does not appear to be in common usage.

Thank you! 144.32.240.169 (talk) 09:29, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Catalectic Wymspen (talk) 10:43, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't think so. The page you link to says a catalectic line is one "lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot".  Elsewhere I find a catalectic line defined as a line in which "one or more unstressed syllables have been dropped, especially in the final metrical foot" (my emphasis).  Marlowe's line is much more drastically shortened than that, from five feet to one.  I don't know of a technical term which covers this case so I would just call it truncated, a word which I don't think is closely defined. --Antiquary (talk) 11:10, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * This doesn't really answer your question, but if you want to be technical you could call it an iamb or a monometer. --Antiquary (talk) 11:48, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you and ! 144.32.240.169 (talk) 22:11, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Iamb simply describes the pattern of stresses. If the end line was just "Of wealth!", you could say that it ended with an monometric iambic foot. However, are you sure that's it? Doing a search for "wealth" on both the Wikisource and Gutenberg versions failed to find the line in question. Matt Deres (talk) 01:23, 16 March 2018 (UTC)


 * That's because you're looking at the B-text of the play – the A-text is as the OP gives it. But I defer to you on the prosody, never my strong point. --Antiquary (talk) 10:40, 16 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. The one link I didn't try searching. Figures. :-) I note that, although (per our article) it's written in blank verse, it only loosely follows iambic pentameter; for example, there are often two stressed (or unstressed) syllables in sequence and the number of syllables per line is rather fluid. Matt Deres (talk) 12:55, 16 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't think I would have got monometric iambic foot by myself! Thank you very much and everyone else who helped me :) 2A00:23C5:650F:8100:1CF9:6EBB:29F2:56B3 (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Translation from German to English
Hi Can you please translate the following:

Nachrichten Aufklärung Abteilung/Chef der Heeresrüstung und Befehlshaber des Ersatzheeres

Thanks scope_creep (talk) 21:40, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 'Nachrichten Aufklärungs Abteilung' should be signals intelligence... department(?). 'Chef der Heeresrüstung' is a bit tricky, perhaps head of ordnance or something along those lines. Bit uncertain how to best translate that. And 'Befehlshaber des Ersatzheeres' should be commander of the replacement army. It was responsible for training, replacement and some garrison duty within Germany if i am not mistaken. 91.49.67.228 (talk) 02:11, 16 March 2018 (UTC)