Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both.
The long syllables of dactylic meter are not usually resolved, and resolution is also not found in the last element of a line.
The opposite of resolution is contraction, which is the substitution of one long syllable where the metrical pattern has a double short.[1] Such a position, which is normally two short syllables, as in a dactylic hexameter, is known as a biceps element.
- ^ West (1987) An Introduction to Greek Metre (Oxford), p. 2.