In poetry, enjambment (/ɛnˈdʒæmbmənt/ or /ɪnˈdʒæmmənt/; from the French enjamber)[1][2][3] is incomplete syntax at the end of a line;[4] the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation.[5] Lines without enjambment are end-stopped.[6] The origin of the word is credited to the French word enjamber, which means 'to straddle or encroach'.[1][7]
In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet);[2] the tension arises from the "mixed message" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning.[8] In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse.[8] Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist.[8]
Enjambment has a long history in poetry. Homer used the technique, and it is the norm for alliterative verse where rhyme is unknown.[8] In the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible enjambment is unusually conspicuous.[9] It was used extensively in England by Elizabethan poets for dramatic and narrative verses, before giving way to closed couplets. The example of John Milton in Paradise Lost laid the foundation for its subsequent use by the English Romantic poets; in its preface he identified it as one of the chief features of his verse: "sense variously drawn out from one verse into another".[8]
^ abGreene, Roland; Cushman, Stephen; Cavanagh, Clare; Ramazani, Jahan; Rouzer, Paul; Feinsod, Harris; Marno, David; Slessarev, Alexandra (2012-08-26). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6.
^ abGroves, Peter Lewis. "Run-on Line, Enjambment". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
^Gardner, Thomas (2005). Jorie Graham: Essays on the Poetry. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-20324-5.
^Chris Baldick (30 October 2008). The Oxford dictionary of literary terms. Oxford University Press. pp. 108–. ISBN 978-0-19-920827-2. Retrieved 16 May 2013.
^"Enjambment - Definition and Examples of Enjambment". Literary Devices. 2020-12-22. Retrieved 2021-09-05.
In poetry, enjambment (/ɛnˈdʒæmbmənt/ or /ɪnˈdʒæmmənt/; from the French enjamber) is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or...
or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. Enjambment–The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line...
popular in the 18th century. The looser type of couplet, with occasional enjambment, was one of the standard verse forms in medieval narrative poetry, largely...
Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin...
It is written in iambic pentameter, employing rhyming couplets and the enjambment technique of not always concluding the sentences at the ends of lines...
adheres to the Miltonic conception of the form, with a greater usage of enjambment. When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark...
asks God to do ("break, blow, burn and make me new"). Donne also uses enjambment between lines three and four to speed up the flow as he builds to his...
poetic line grammatically connected to the end of the previous line by enjambment. E.g., in "Know then thyself. ‖ Presume not God to scan" (from An Essay...
approaches taboo words, only to cut them off and modify them with an enjambment. It shares much of the same melody as the 1937 "The Merry-Go-Round Broke...
more likely to pick a wrong meaning because they can rationalize its enjambment. Some of the earlier meanings are only partially recalled in stock phrases...
foliate and floral Kufic inscriptions—often formed into arches, columns, enjambments, and "architectural calligrams"—are generally used as decorative elements...
dividing the poem into two equal parts. Keats makes use of frequent enjambment in "If by dull rhymes our English must be chained" (1816) and divides...
Arabian poetic roots. Firstly, the Persian ghazals did not employ radical enjambment between the two halves of the couplet, and secondly, the Persian ghazals...
poet John Hollander cited "The Red Wheelbarrow" as a good example of enjambment to slow down the reader, creating a "meditative" poem. The editors of...
excluded, but the rhyme of open and closed o is kept. Finally, Petrarch's enjambment creates longer semantic units by connecting one line to the following...
exemplified by a passage from Poly-Olbion, which features a rare caesural enjambment (symbolized ¦) in the first line: Ye sacred Bards, that to ¦ your harps'...
of the line (6 syllables) is referred to as a hemistich (hémistiche). Enjambment is not used in the French alexandrin, but is sometimes employed in English...
metampsychosis"), and irregular versification which includes frequent enjambment. The poem has been cited as manifesting "the extremes of the metaphysical...
period or a semicolon. English sonnet enjambment The continuing of a syntactic unit over the end of a line. Enjambment occurs when the sense of the line overflows...
layered rhythms, multisyllabic rhymes, internal half rhymes, assonance, and enjambment. Music critic Marc Lamont Hill of PopMatters elaborates on Nas' lyricism...
eroticised, and associated with two-beat lines and lyric as a genre; enjambment (continuing a thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without...
each "couplet", or Germanic line, as a complete syntactic unit, avoiding enjambment where a thought begun on one line continues through the following lines;...
for the reader by indentation, but hidden from the listener by radical enjambment ("fawn- / brown" and "coxcomb- / tinted"). Elizabeth Daryush, known for...
that of another line, as opposed to internal rhyme. End-stopping line Enjambment: incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one...
was a closed couplet in iambic pentameter that would have a minimum of enjambment. This form was called the "heroic couplet," because it was suitable for...
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