Caesural

Caesural is an adjective relating to the caesura, a pause within a line of verse or other metrical text. The term derives from Latin caesūra, meaning a cut or cut-off, reflecting the moment of interruption in the flow of speech. In prosody, a caesura marks a break that can influence rhythm, breath, and the pacing of a line.

In poetry, caesura serves several purposes. It can create a momentary subdivision of a sentence, emphasize a rising or turning thought, or produce a dramatic or rhetorical effect. The pause may be indicated by punctuation or by the poet’s natural speech pattern, and editors often denote it in scansion or lineation. Caesural placement interacts with meter, line-length, and the reader’s or speaker’s breath, shaping the overall musicality of a verse.

Types of caesura are described in some traditions as masculine (strong) or feminine (weak). A masculine caesura typically follows a stressed syllable, while a feminine caesura follows an unstressed one. Other classifications note grammatical or semantic caesuras, where the pause aligns with syntactic boundaries or meaning rather than metrical stress alone.

Notation and examples vary. In printed verse, caesuras may be shown by a vertical bar or by standard punctuation. For readers, the effect is a natural break in delivery: For example, in the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question,” a caesural pause after the first “be” guides the rhythm and breath.

Caesural analysis is common in English, German, Latin, and other literatures, where scholars study how pauses contribute to meaning, emphasis, and musicality in poetry. See also caesura, scansion, prosody.