Technique
Prosody
From Greek prosoidia: tone of a syllable. The systematic study was codified in Aristotle's Poetics and Cicero's De Oratore; in English, established by Renaissance handbooks.
Definition
The formal study of the sound structures of verse: meter, rhythm, rhyme, intonation, and all aspects of aural pattern.
Example
Prosodic analysis of a line marks stressed (/) and unstressed (u) syllables to reveal its metrical skeleton.