| Western Verse Forms
Throughout the long history of poetry from the Egyptians to the present, poets have generally not made up their own verse forms, but squeezed what they had to say into pre-existing models. Following is a list of some of the most prominent Western verse forms. If you are planning to do a poem in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Italian, please read the following carefully, and perhaps print it out for use on the quiz. (You will need to complete a quiz as part of the assignment.) If you wish to try Chinese or Japanese poetry, on the other hand, scroll to the bottom of the page to learn about those traditions. Note that the following terms are used to group lines in a stanza together: two lines make a COUPLET three lines make a TERCET four lines make a QUATRAIN six lines make a SESTET ALEXANDRINE. A line of twelve syllables, divided (by a comma or other pause) into two half-lines (HEMISTICHS) of six syllables each. The two hemistichs stand in a relationship of complementarity to each other, which in turn are frequently complemented by the next line which rhymes to form a COUPLET. (Other rhyme schemes are possible.) The alexandrine is particularly associated with French verse, where it was viritually the only form from the sixteenth through the late 19th centuries. The play Tartuffe, by Molière, was originally in alexandrines, which the English translator has shortened to 10 or 11 syllables. BALLAD FREE VERSE We speak of free verse when the
poem does not follow any regular meter of
stressed/unstressed accents. Walt Whitman's Leaves of
Grass comes to mind in American free verse usage: MADRIGAL SONNET TERZA RIMA VILLANCICO You are now ready to select the poem you wish to listen to. Select a Language Choose one of the
languages below that you would like to use for your
assignment.
You will
receive verse form information for the language and a
poem from which you will write an essay. Select one
of the following: Neither rhyme nor metrical foot counts for anything in classical Japanese poetry. Poetry is defined as an articifially concise form of expression, fitting everything into alternate 5 and 7 syllable lines. Because the verse form itself does not present as many challenges as others, Japanese poets increased its difficulty with the practice of linked poetry, where one poet will respond to the poem of another, keeping both to the theme and, of course, the strict syllable count. The main forms are:
Note the progressive shortening of poem length in this list, as each shorter form gets "split off" from a longer one. Classical Japanese poetry also adheres to rather strict rules of subject matter and arrangement. For example, a haiku is always supposed to open with a reference not just to nature in general, but to a particular season of the year. OK, I'm
finally ready for the Japanese Poem Like English, German verse is usually divided into metrical feet based on a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. (Such feet have been described in the general introduction to verse on a previous page.) Like English, German has a "folk line" based on four stressed syllables with a variable number of unstressed syllables (like a standard proverb or the ballad "Hughie Graeme"). Otherwise, as befits its location in the center of Europe, German poetry has borrowed the verse forms of almost every other tradition. In the 17th century it used the French ALEXANDRINE line. In the 18th it used classical Greek and Roman forms, such as dactylic hexameter (the meter of the Odyssey). From the late 18th through the 19th centuries, BLANK VERSE was popular (developed by Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists). Romanticism made Romance forms such as OTTAVA RIMA and TERZA RIMA popular, and even the Persian ghazal. Basically, whatever forms one can find in European poetry will make their appearance in German, as well. OK, I'm
finally ready for the German Poem In considering French verse, it is important to keep in mind that there are no regulated stress differences in the French language, meaning that only syllables, not metrical feet, are counted. Since this lack of stress makes it difficult to create a rhythmic line, French relies on three other devices to differentiate verse from prose:
Thus, French verse is identified by lines with repeated syllable counts, grouped together in stanzas. In the ALEXANDRINE, a twelve-syllable line which has played an important role in French verse, the caesura always occurs in the middle of the line (i.e. after the sixth syllable), whereas in other lines it can vary. Alexandrine lines rhymed as couplets are the building blocks of French classical tragedy and comedy (see the plays by Racine and Molière in the anthology.) Despite these differences from other European languages, French verse makes use of the same verse forms as the others (sonnet, terza rima, etc.). Particular French forms include the RONDEAU, a dance form with a repeating refrain. OK, I'm
finally ready for the French Poem The characteristics of the Chinese language:
Much Classical Chinese
poetry was in "Regulated verse," i.e. a highly
schematized verse form, which contains eight lines of
uniform length, with either five or seven
characters per line, and conforms to certain strict
metrical and rhetorical rules. It was predominantly
practiced by Tang and Song poets in seventh and eighth
century. Keep
these rules in mind as you move on to the Chinese poem OK, I'm
finally ready for the Chinese
Poem Spanish makes use of rhyme, meter, and syllable count. However, in distinguishing different types of poems, syllable count is considered the most important element. Poems with two to eight syllables per line belong to what is called "arte menor," while those with more than eight belong to the "arte mayor." Syllable count and rhyme scheme, together, make for the classification of most verse forms. Counting Syllables Counting syllables in Spanish verse is somewhat tricky. In romance languages, there are two manners of counting syllables; orthographic (dictated by how the phonemes separate each other in a word; in the word "father", you have two accents, "fa-ther") or prosodic (determined by poetic conventions, explained below). A couple of prosodic rules: 1. Line endings If the line ends with an accented syllable, it is counted as two, while if it ends with two unaccented sylaables, they are counted as one. Thus, metrically speaking, the following lines all have eight syllables:
2. Sinalefa and hiatus. In the example above, the last syllable of "compraría" and the first of "a" are counted as one. If you look at the following line of a Neruda poem, you will notice that there is a plus (+) sign between "noche" and "esta":
When reading the line "no-che-es" one will read three syllables, but as a convention, when two vowels are next to each other (in this case the "e"s of noche and está), the two vowels connect to form one. This combination of unaccented vowels is called "sinalefa." At the same time, the connection between vowels can be dissolved to make both vowels sound. This is called "hiatus." With these conventions, the poem holds the integrity of the number of syllables per verse. 3. Synaresis and Diaresis. Normally, two "strong" vowels (a, e, o) together make two syllables, as in "cre-o." However, they can be contracted to fit the meter of the line. This is called "synaresis." Similarly, when two "weak" vowels combine, a single syllable is formed, as in "ruin." This can be separated into two syllables, "ru-in," if called for by the meter, in the phenomenon known as "diaresis." The actual rules are a
bit more complicated in all three areas, but the idea
here has been to show how the prosodic syllable count
differs from the phonemic one. Consonant rhyme: Putting it all together Spanish classifies verse forms of eight syllables or less as "arte menor," and further subdivides this category into forms:
"Arte mayor,"
then, are verses of more than eight syllables, dominated
by the hendecasyllable line (that is, ten syllables per
line) which has become the favorite of Spanish verse. The
longer length of these lines allows them to be divided
into half-lines. Also, since this line length is beyond
the reach of folk poetry, consonant rhyme is found almost
exclusively. Most of the forms here are imported from
Italy, such as the SONNET, TERZA RIMA, and MADRIGAL. OK, I'm
finally ready for the Spanish poem Italian Verse Forms Theory. The first important theoretician of Italian prosody was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), whose study and practice of versification became the basis of both poetry and criticism for centuries. Dante expressed his theory in his unfinished treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vemacular, ca. 1302-5). The treatise is dedicated specifically to the question of the search for an Italian dialect noble and illustrious enough to serve as medium for refined lyric poetry, but includes also a discussion on metrical forms, particularly of the canzone. The example of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, together with the work of some fourteenth-century compilers of metrical treatises, fixed the rules of Italian prosody for the poets of subsequent centuries, until innovations and changes in metrical forms were introduced by more recent literary movements, such as Futurism and Hermeticism in the 20th century. Meter. Italian metrics is based both on the number of syllables and on the position of the primary accent in the line. The latter element is the most important: the number of syllables is counted only through the last accent. If any follow it, they are ignored (for the purposes of determining meter). The hendecasyllable, for example, is determined by the placement of the primary accent on the 10th syllable and of the secondary stress either on the 4th or on the 6th, but not necessarily by the presence of exactly 10 syllables as the name indicates. Therefore, the hendecasyllable can be "piano," if it adheres to ttw 10 syllable model, "tronco," if it contains 9 syllables, or "sdrucciolo" or "bisdrucciolo," if it contains 11 or 12 syllables. Vowels in hiatus are often elided or pronounced separately for the scansion of the verse. The hendecasyllable is the most popular Italian meter, indicated by Dante as the most elegant. Other frequent forms are the "settenario" (7 syllable, stress on the 6th), the "quinario" (5 syllables, stress on the 4th) and the "ottonario" (8 syllables, stress on the 7th). Less common are examples of 3, 4, and 6-syllable verse. Many early narrative poems were written in stanzas composod in "alessandrini," 14-syllable lines which are essentially double septenaries with accent on the 6th and the 13th syllables and caesura after the first "settenario." The imitation of classical meters is recurrent, starting from the 15th century (with first attempts of Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo Dati) through the 19th. Rhyme. The Italian rhyme usually is exact: identical sounds are produced from the stressed syllable all the way to the end of the word (amóre/doóbre; complí/sentí; cántano/piántano). Other forms of rhyme, such as eye rhymes (words apparently but not actually sounding identically), equivocal rhyme (same word with different meanings), derivative rhyme (words with the same root), and rich rhyme (uncommon words) are rarely found. A particular phenomenon in the early lyrics is the Sicilian rhyme: these are verses which, composed in exact rhyme in Sicilian dialect, lost the identity of the sound when translated into Italian and regularized ortographically in the late 13th century (i.e.: the Sicilian ridi/vidi in Italian becomes ride/vede). In general, most medieval Italian poetry is rhymed, with few examples of assonance and consonance and occasional versi sciolti (unrhymed lines). Poetic Foms The principal poetic forms of Italian prosody are the "canzone," the "ballata," the "Sonnet," and the "ottava rima." CANZONI in general consist of several stanzas, mainly composed in alternating 10-syllable and 7 syllable lines. The BALLATA developed in the 13th century as a song that accornpanies a dance.: Is has the same form as the canzone, but it starts with a refrain ("ritornello o "ripresa") which is repeated at the end of each stanza. The SONNET was invented in the 13th century by Giacomo da Lentini, a notary at the court of Frederick II in Sicily. It developed probabty as imitation the stanza of the canzone. Petrarch was the most illustrious practioner of the sonnet; through his example this form became very popular in the Renaissance and spread throughout Europe. The OTTAVA RIMA was used in narrative poetry by Boccaccio for the first time, and became the basic form of epic and popular poetry during the Renaissance. |
