Diktemeting

Diktemeting is a term used in literary studies to describe the systematic study and description of verse meter and rhythm in poetry. The word combines dikt, meaning poem, with metering or measuring, and is found in several Scandinavian-language scholarly traditions.

The field covers metrical patterns such as iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic schemes, line length, rhyme, and stanza form, as well as prosodic features like stress placement and rhythm. Researchers may analyze classical and contemporary verse across languages, applying both traditional scansion and digital annotation.

Methodologically, diktemeting includes manual scansion, annotation of metrical features, and computational approaches that process large verse corpora to reveal rhythmic tendencies or cross-linguistic patterns. Quantitative metrics may assess regularity, variation, and the distribution of metrical types.

In practice, the concept informs close reading, translation studies aimed at preserving rhythm, and poetry pedagogy. It is also used in digital humanities to compare meters across authors and genres and to study how rhythm affects reception and comprehension.

The term is used across different scholarly communities without a single standardized framework. Debates often focus on the primacy of stress-based versus syllable-based scanning, variation in cross-language metrical systems, and the applicability of traditional meters to free verse.

See also: prosody, meter, scansion, versification, poetics.