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Often called the "classical alexandrine", vers héroïque, or grands vers, it became the dominant long line of French verse up to the end of the 19th century, [7] and was "elevated to the status of national symbol and eventually came to typify French poetry overall". [10] The classical alexandrine is always rhymed.
Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French Roman d'Alexandre of 1170, although it had already been used several decades earlier in Le Pèlerinage de ...
It is also used in Italian and French poetry, and in poetry of the Croats (the most famous example being Marko Marulić). In an Anglo-Saxon and French context, the dodecasyllable is generally called the " alexandrine ", after the French equivalent .
The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–96). Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is ABABBCBCC. [1] [2]
The alexandrine is broken into two six-syllable groups; each six-syllable group is called a "hémistiche". In traditional poetry, the césure cannot occur between two words that are syntactically linked (such as a subject and its verb), nor can it occur after an unelided mute e. (For more on poetic meter, see Poetic meter.) For example:
The poem is written entirely in alexandrine verses (6+6 syllables), with caesurae in the middle. It is composed of quintain stanzas, with an ABAAB rhyme. The last line of each quintain contains only 6 syllables. [4] Its beginning is often quoted in Catalan: Statue paying tribute to the poem in Montjuic, Barcelona
In modern Greek poetry hexameter was replaced by line of fifteen syllables. In French poetry alexandrine [9] is the most typical pattern. In Italian literature the hendecasyllable, [10] which is a metre of eleven syllables, is the most common line. In Serbian ten syllable lines were used in long epic poems.
Use of the 10 syllable line in French poetry was eclipsed by the 12 syllable alexandrine line, particularly after the 16th century. Paul Valéry's great poem "The Graveyard by the Sea" (Le Cimetière marin) is, however, written in decasyllables.