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54-457: However, no tradition remains this simple. Each applies additional constraints (such as obligatory stress or nonstress on certain syllables) and options (such as a permitted or required additional syllable at the end of one or both hemistichs). Thus a line that is metrical in one tradition may be unmetrical in another. Where the alexandrine has been adopted, it has frequently served as the heroic verse form of that language or culture, English being

108-474: A distinct meter that embraces lines that qualify as well-formed iambic pentameter as well as others that don't. Jakob Schipper for example, laid out a 16-type pattern for "five-accent verse": which he then further multiplied by allowing that sometimes the caesura could appear elsewhere (most commonly after the third accent): C. S. Lewis in fact denominated this verse the "fifteenth-century heroic" while both simplifying and broadening its metrical definition:

162-502: A line with a sharp medial caesura, each resulting half-line having from 2 to 3 stresses, most hovering between 2 and 3. Lewis exemplifies his conception of the "fifteenth-century heroic line" with this excerpt from The Assembly of Gods : His shéte from his bódy | dówn he let fáll, And ón a rèwde máner | he salútyd àll the róut, Wíth a bóld vòyse | cárpying wórdÿs stóut. Bút he spáke all hólow, | ás hit hád be óon Had spóke in anóther wórld | þát had wóo begóon. Iambic pentameter

216-439: A nation's heroic verse should aspire to. Alliterative verse (as exemplified by Beowulf ) was the heroic verse of Old English , as, in several closely related forms, it was for all Germanic languages more or less during the first millennium C.E. Then that sorry soul   suffered awhile, most miserably,   he who in murk lingered. Alone he listened   to the delight each day, human happiness,  

270-484: A notable exception. The term "alexandrine" may be used with greater or lesser rigour. Peureux suggests that only French syllabic verse with a 6+6 structure is, strictly speaking, an alexandrine. Preminger et al . allow a broader scope: "Strictly speaking, the term 'alexandrine' is appropriate to French syllabic meters, and it may be applied to other metrical systems only where they too espouse syllabism as their principle, introduce phrasal accentuation, or rigorously observe

324-574: A pun about alexandrines: when the Druid Panoramix ("Getafix" in the English translation) meets his Alexandrian (Egyptian) friend the latter exclaims Je suis, mon cher ami, || très heureux de te voir at which Panoramix observes C'est un Alexandrin ("That's an alexandrine!"/"He's an Alexandrian!"). The pun can also be heard in the theatrical adaptations. The English translation renders this as "My dear old Getafix || I hope I find you well", with

378-660: A renewal of blank verse with his volume of kaleidoscopic meditations, The Task , published in 1784. After Shakespeare and Milton, Cowper was the main influence on the next major poets in blank verse, teenagers when Cowper published his masterpiece. These were the Lake Poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Wordsworth used the form for many of the Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), and for his longest efforts, The Prelude and The Excursion . Wordsworth's verse recovers some of

432-452: A time when many other poets were turning to free verse . Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century. Marlowe was the first to exploit the potential of blank verse for powerful and involved speech: You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds, That when they vomit forth into

486-473: A vehicle for major works. The Czech alexandrine is a comparatively recent development, based on the French alexandrine and introduced by Karel Hynek Mácha in the 19th century. Its structure forms a halfway point between features usual in syllabic and in accentual-syllabic verse, being more highly constrained than most syllabic verse, and less so than most accentual-syllabic verse. Moreover, it equally encourages

540-399: Is a line of 7+7 syllables, probably developed in imitation of the French alexandrine. Its structure is: It was used beginning about 1200 for mester de clerecía (clerical verse), typically occurring in the cuaderna vía , a stanza of four alejandrinos all with a single end-rhyme. The alejandrino was most prominent during the 13th and 14th centuries, after which time it was eclipsed by

594-475: Is a notable example of end-stopped blank verse. The 1561 play Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville was the first English play to use blank verse. Christopher Marlowe was the first English author to achieve critical fame for his use of blank verse. The major achievements in English blank verse were made by William Shakespeare , who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter , and John Milton , whose Paradise Lost

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648-454: Is an extract spoken by Princess Ida after singing her entrance aria "Oh, goddess wise". Women of Adamant, fair neophytes— Who thirst for such instruction as we give, Attend, while I unfold a parable. The elephant is mightier than Man, Yet Man subdues him. Why? The elephant Is elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead) And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's As Woman's brain to Man's—(that's rule of three),— Conquers

702-612: Is dependent upon context. The oldest Greek verseform, and the Greek line for heroic verse, is the dactylic hexameter , which was already well-established in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in this meter. The Saturnian was used in Latin epics of the 3rd century B.C.E., but few examples remain and the meter is little understood. Beginning at least with Ennius (239–169 B.C.E.) dactylic hexameter

756-431: Is musical and regular; his lyric " Tears, Idle Tears " is probably the first important example of the blank verse stanzaic poem. Browning's blank verse, in poems like " Fra Lippo Lippi ", is more abrupt and conversational. Gilbert and Sullivan 's 1884 opera, Princess Ida , is based on Tennyson's "The Princess". Gilbert's dialogue is in blank verse throughout (although the other 13 Savoy operas have prose dialogue). Below

810-756: Is written in blank verse. Miltonic blank verse was widely imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson (in The Seasons ) and William Cowper (in The Task ). Romantic English poets such as William Wordsworth , Percy Bysshe Shelley , and John Keats used blank verse as a major form. Shortly afterwards, Alfred, Lord Tennyson became particularly devoted to blank verse, using it for example in his long narrative poem " The Princess ", as well as for one of his most famous poems: " Ulysses ". Among American poets, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at

864-520: The Pléiade , and has retained its status since then. Nous partîmes cinq cents; | mais par un prompt renfort Nous nous vîmes trois mille | en arrivant au port, Tant, à nous voir marcher | avec un tel visage, Les plus épouvantés | reprenaient de courage! As five hundred we left, | but soon we gained support: To three thousand we grew | as we approached the port. Thus, seeing us all march | in league and with such favor, The fear melted away, |

918-483: The River Thames ), the neoclassical closed heroic couplet: Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full. The heroic quatrain (also "elegiac quatrain") is a stanza of iambic pentameter riming ABAB . In France the décasyllabe and alexandrine have taken turns as

972-605: The décasyllabe and octosyllabe for cultural prominence and use in various genres. "The alexandrine came into its own in the middle of the sixteenth century with the poets of the Pléiade and was firmly established in the seventeenth century." It became the preferred line for the prestigious genres of epic and tragedy . The structure of the classical French alexandrine is Classical alexandrines are always rhymed, often in couplets alternating masculine rhymes and feminine rhymes , though other configurations (such as quatrains and sonnets ) are also common. Victor Hugo began

1026-407: The 17th century until Paradise Lost , in which Milton used it with much license. Milton used the flexibility of blank verse, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as these: ....Into what Pit thou seest From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd He with his Thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those Nor what

1080-458: The 20th century in original verse and in translations of narrative verse. Most of Robert Frost 's narrative and conversational poems are in blank verse; so are other poems like Wallace Stevens 's " The Idea of Order at Key West " and " The Comedian as the Letter C ", W. B. Yeats 's " The Second Coming ", W. H. Auden 's "The Watershed" and John Betjeman 's Summoned by Bells . A complete listing

1134-460: The Greeks, and many brave soules losd From breasts Heroique—sent them farre, to that invisible cave That no light comforts; and their lims to dogs and vultures gave. However, landmark works like Gorboduc (1561), portions of The Mirror for Magistrates (1559-1610), Tamburlaine (c. 1587), Astrophel and Stella (1580s, published 1591), and The Faerie Queene (1590-1596), established

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1188-469: The Plains of Heav'n, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: Milton also wrote Paradise Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank verse. In the century after Milton, there are few distinguished uses of either dramatic or non-dramatic blank verse; in keeping with

1242-484: The Potent Victor in his rage Can else inflict do I repent or change, Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit, That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd In dubious Battel on

1296-963: The air, My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven. Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in this exchange from King John , one blank verse line is broken between two characters: My lord?             A grave.                         He shall not live.                                                 Enough. Shakespeare also used enjambment increasingly often in his verse, and in his last plays

1350-664: The best known of his blank verse works. The blank verse of Keats in Hyperion is mainly modelled on that of Milton, but takes fewer liberties with the pentameter and possesses the characteristic of Keats's verse. Shelley's blank verse in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound is closer to Elizabethan practice than to Milton's. Of the Victorian writers in blank verse, the most prominent are Tennyson and Robert Browning . Tennyson's blank verse in poems like "Ulysses" and "The Princess"

1404-423: The desire for regularity, most of the blank verse of this period is somewhat stiff. The best examples of blank verse from this time are probably John Dryden 's tragedy All for Love and James Thomson 's The Seasons . An example notable as much for its failure with the public as for its subsequent influence on the form is John Dyer 's The Fleece . At the close of the 18th century, William Cowper ushered in

1458-519: The dominant long line of the German baroque. Unlike many similar lines, the Polish alexandrine developed not from French verse but from Latin, specifically, the 13-syllable goliardic line: Though looser instances of this (nominally) 13-syllable line were occasionally used in Polish literature, it was Mikołaj Rej and Jan Kochanowski who, in the 16th century, introduced the syllabically strict line as

1512-427: The foolish giant of the woods, As Woman, in her turn, shall conquer Man. In Mathematics, Woman leads the way: The narrow-minded pedant still believes That two and two make four! Why, we can prove, We women—household drudges as we are— That two and two make five—or three—or seven; Or five-and-twenty, if the case demands! Blank verse, of varying degrees of regularity, has been used quite frequently throughout

1566-758: The freedom of Milton's, but is generally far more regular: Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! And again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. – Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs... Coleridge's blank verse is more technical than Wordsworth's, but he wrote little of it: Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings, such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile... His conversation poems such as " The Eolian Harp " and " Frost at Midnight " are

1620-451: The frutfull felds. The fourteener vied with iambic pentameter as the English heroic verse during the mid-16th-century, especially for translation from classical drama and narrative, notably: Jasper Heywood 's translations of Seneca (1559-1561), Arthur Golding 's translation of Ovid 's Metamorphoses (1567), and George Chapman 's Iliad (1598-1611). Achilles' banefull wrath resound, O Goddesse, that imposd Infinite sorrowes on

1674-458: The greater is my pain. Similarly, in early 17th-century Germany, Georg Rudolf Weckherlin advocated for an alexandrine with free rhythms, reflecting French practice; whereas Martin Opitz advocated for a strict accentual-syllabic iambic alexandrine in imitation of contemporary Dutch practice — and German poets followed Opitz. The alexandrine (strictly iambic with a consistent medial caesura) became

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1728-479: The green sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war – to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt;... This very free treatment of blank verse

1782-491: The hall loud with glee; sweet was the singing,   sound of harping. The Alliterative Revival (mainly of the 14th century) likely constituted a continuation (though in evolved form) of the earlier tradition. However, around 1380 Geoffrey Chaucer developed the English iambic pentameter , based chiefly on the Italian endecasillabo and composed chiefly in couplets or in rime royal . Although Chaucer's practice

1836-460: The iambic pentameter—rimed for narrative and lyric and largely unrimed for drama—as the English heroic line. The heroic couplet is a pair of iambic pentameter lines that rime together. Frequently, the term is associated with the balanced, closed couplets that dominated English verse from roughly 1640 to 1790, although the form dates back to Chaucer, and remains in use often in a looser form. John Denham exemplifies, and describes (while addressing

1890-404: The language's heroic verseform: first, the décasyllabe appearing in the 11th century; then, around 1200 the alexandrine began its first period of dominance; however, by 1400 the décasyllabe had again been established as the French heroic verse, completely ousting the alexandrine. The alexandrine, in a slightly stricter form, was resurrected in the middle of the 16th century by the poets of

1944-444: The medial caesura, as in French." Common usage within the literatures of European languages is broader still, embracing lines syllabic, accentual-syllabic, and (inevitably) stationed ambivalently between the two; lines of 12, 13, or even 14 syllables; lines with obligatory, predominant, and optional caesurae. Although alexandrines occurred in French verse as early as the 12th century, they were slightly looser rhythmically, and vied with

1998-403: The metrically more flexible arte mayor . Juan Ruiz 's Book of Good Love is one of the best-known examples of cuaderna vía , though other verse forms also appear in the work. The mid-16th-century poet Jan van der Noot pioneered syllabic Dutch alexandrines on the French model, but within a few decades Dutch alexandrines had been transformed into strict iambic hexameters with a caesura after

2052-492: The mid-16th century stricter alexandrines were popular as the first line of poulter's measure couplets, fourteeners (strict iambic heptameters) providing the second line. The strict English alexandrine may be 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' melodious strings Sung th'ancient Heroes' deeds (the monuments of Kings) And in your dreadful verse ingrav'd

2106-430: The process of loosening the strict two-hemistich structure. While retaining the medial caesura, he often reduced it to a mere word-break, creating a three-part line ( alexandrin ternaire ) with this structure: The Symbolists further weakened the classical structure, sometimes eliminating any or all of these caesurae. However, at no point did the newer line replace the older; rather, they were used concurrently, often in

2160-599: The prophecies, The agèd world's descents, and genealogies; (lines 31-34) The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser , with its stanzas of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one alexandrine, exemplifies what came to be its chief role: as a somewhat infrequent variant line in an otherwise iambic pentameter context. Alexandrines provide occasional variation in the blank verse of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries (but rarely; they constitute only about 1% of Shakespeare's blank verse). John Dryden and his contemporaries and followers likewise occasionally employed them as

2214-461: The related 6-syllable line, were influenced by Latin or Romance examples. When employed in 4-line or 8-line stanzas and riming in couplets, this is called the Hungarian alexandrine; it is the Hungarian heroic verse form. Beginning with the 16th-century verse of Bálint Balassi , this became the dominant Hungarian verseform. In the comic book Asterix and Cleopatra , the author Goscinny inserted

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2268-437: The reply "An Alexandrine". Heroic verse Heroic verse is a term that may be used to designate epic poems , but which is more usually used to describe the meter (s) in which those poems are most typically written (regardless of whether the content is " heroic " or not). Because the meter typically used to narrate heroic deeds differs by language and even within language by period, the specific meaning of "heroic verse"

2322-474: The same poem. This loosening process eventually led to vers libéré and finally to vers libre . In English verse, "alexandrine" is typically used to mean "iambic hexameter": Whereas the French alexandrine is syllabic, the English is accentual-syllabic; and the central caesura (a defining feature of the French) is not always rigidly preserved in English. Though English alexandrines have occasionally provided

2376-480: The second (rarely the first) line of heroic couplets , or even more distinctively as the third line of a triplet. In his Essay on Criticism , Alexander Pope denounced (and parodied) the excessive and unskillful use of this practice: Then at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. (lines 354-357) The Spanish verso alejandrino

2430-524: The sole metrical line for a poem, for example in lyric poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney , and in two notable long poems, Michael Drayton 's Poly-Olbion and Robert Browning 's Fifine at the Fair , they have more often featured alongside other lines. During the Middle Ages they typically occurred with heptameters (seven-beat lines), both exhibiting metrical looseness. Around

2484-573: The third foot. From the Low Countries the accentual-syllabic alexandrine spread to other continental literatures. Als ick in liefde ben, dan ben ick als gebonden, Als ick daer buyten ben, dan ben ick gans geschonden… Wat doe ick doch aldus? ontbonden wil ick zijn, Soo ick ontbonden ben, soo meerdert doch mijn pijn… Whenas I am in love, in fetters am I bound, When I in love am not, shame doth me quite confound. Say then, what shall I do? My freedom would I gain, But when I freedom get

2538-445: The throng becoming braver! Blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter . It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse". The first known use of blank verse in English

2592-403: The very different rhythms of iambic hexameter and dactylic tetrameter to emerge by preserving the constants of both measures: Hungarian metrical verse may be written either syllabically (the older and more traditional style, known as "national") or quantitatively. One of the national lines has a 6+6 structure: Although deriving from native folk versification, it is possible that this line, and

2646-610: Was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the Aeneid (composed c.  1540 ; published posthumously, 1554–1557 ). He may have been inspired by the Latin original since classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or possibly he was inspired by Ancient Greek verse or the Italian verse form of versi sciolti , both of which also did not use rhyme. The play Arden of Faversham (around 1590 by an unknown author)

2700-421: Was given to using feminine endings (in which the last syllable of the line is unstressed, for instance lines 3 and 6 of the following example); all of this made his later blank verse extremely rich and varied. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do

2754-424: Was imitated by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and led to general metrical looseness in the hands of less skilled users. However, Shakespearean blank verse was used with some success by John Webster and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson , meanwhile, used a tighter blank verse with less enjambment in his comedies Volpone and The Alchemist . Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of

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2808-485: Was introduced in imitation of the Greeks, thereafter becoming the Latin heroic meter. The Greek/Roman dactylic hexameter exerted a huge influence over the subsequent poetic practice of much of Europe, whether by the new accentual verseforms it evolved into (as the medieval riming leonine verse ), by attempts at reviving it either quantitatively or accentually (as by Alberti , Stanyhurst , Klopstock , Longfellow , Bridges , and many others), or simply as an ideal of what

2862-593: Was largely preserved to the north by the Scottish Chaucerians ( James I of Scotland , Robert Henryson , William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas ), in England itself changes in pronunciation or taste soon rendered Chaucer's technique extinct, and iambic pentameter disappeared for over 100 years. The practice in these years has been characterized as incompetent ("bad shambling heroics" ), but alternatively as

2916-535: Was re-developed by Wyatt and Surrey in the 1530s or 1540s. It was Surrey's line (modeled this time on the French vers de dix ) as finessed by Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser that was re-embraced as English heroic verse. Using this line, Surrey also introduced blank verse into English, previous instances being rimed. A long exile thou art assigned to bere, Long to furrow large space of stormy seas; So shalt thou reach at last Hesperian land, Wher Lidian Tiber with his gentle streme Mildly doth flow along

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