Alexandrine In English Literature
Juan Navarro
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 Plerinage de Charlemagne.[1] The foundation of most alexandrines consists of two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each, separated by a caesura (a metrical pause or word break, which may or may not be realized as a stronger syntactic break):
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.
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.[2] 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 the medial caesura, as in French."[3] 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,[4] they were slightly looser rhythmically, and vied with the dcasyllabe 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 Pliade and was firmly established in the seventeenth century."[5] It became the preferred line for the prestigious genres of epic and tragedy.[2] The structure of the classical French alexandrine is
Victor Hugo began the process of loosening the strict two-hemistich structure.[8] While retaining the medial caesura, he often reduced it to a mere word-break, creating a three-part line (alexandrin ternaire) with this structure:[9]
The Symbolists further weakened the classical structure, sometimes eliminating any or all of these caesurae.[10] However, at no point did the newer line replace the older; rather, they were used concurrently, often in the same poem.[11][10] This loosening process eventually led to vers libr and finally to vers libre.[12]
Though English alexandrines have occasionally provided the sole metrical line for a poem, for example in lyric poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey[13] and Sir Philip Sidney,[14] and in two notable long poems, Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion[15] and Robert Browning's Fifine at the Fair,[16] they have more often featured alongside other lines. During the Middle Ages they typically occurred with heptameters (seven-beat lines), both exhibiting metrical looseness.[17] Around 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 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[19]). John Dryden and his contemporaries and followers likewise occasionally employed them as 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:
The alejandrino was most prominent during the 13th and 14th centuries, after which time it was eclipsed by the metrically more flexible arte mayor.[23] Juan Ruiz's Book of Good Love is one of the best-known examples of cuaderna va, though other verse forms also appear in the work.[24]
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 the third foot.[25] From Holland the accentual-syllabic alexandrine spread to other continental literatures.[26].mw-parser-output .verse_translation .translatedpadding-left:2em!important@media only screen and (max-width:43.75em).mw-parser-output .verse_translation.wrap_when_small tddisplay:block;padding-left:0.5em.mw-parser-output .verse_translation.wrap_when_small .translatedpadding-left:0.5em!important
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 the greater is my pain.[26]
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 a vehicle for major works.[29]
The Czech alexandrine is a comparatively recent development, based on the French alexandrine and introduced by Karel Hynek Mcha 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 the very different rhythms of iambic hexameter and dactylic tetrameter to emerge by preserving the constants of both measures:
Although deriving from native folk versification, it is possible that this line, and the related 6-syllable line, were influenced by Latin or Romance examples.[31] 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.[32] Beginning with the 16th-century verse of Blint Balassi, this became the dominant Hungarian verseform.[33]
In the comic book Asterix and Cleopatra, the author Goscinny inserted 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, trs 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 the reply "An Alexandrine".
The French alexandrine (French: alexandrin) is a syllabic poetic metre of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own.
The earliest recorded use of alexandrines is in the Medieval French poem Le Plerinage de Charlemagne of 1150, but the name derives from their more famous use in part of the Roman d'Alexandre of 1170.[2] L. E. Kastner states:
From about the year 1200 the Alexandrine began to supplant the decasyllabic line as the metre of the chansons de geste, and at the end of the thirteenth century it had gained so completely the upper hand as the epic line that several of the old chansons in the decasyllabic line were turned into Alexandrines...[3]
However, toward the end of the 14th century, the line was "totally abandoned, being ousted by its old rival the decasyllabic";[5] and despite occasional isolated attempts, would not regain its stature for almost 200 years.[6]
The alexandrine was resurrected in the middle of the 16th century by the poets of the Pliade, notably tienne Jodelle (tragedy), Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (narrative),[7] Jean-Antoine de Baf (lyric), and Pierre de Ronsard.[8] Later, Pierre Corneille introduced its use in comedy.[9] It was metrically stricter, allowing no epic caesura:
Often called the "classical alexandrine", vers hroque, 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. The rgle d'alternance des rimes (rule of alternation of rhymes), which was a tendency in some poets before the Pliade, was "firmly established by Ronsard in the sixteenth century and rigorously decreed by Malherbe in the seventeenth."[11] It states that "a masculine rime cannot be immediately followed by a different masculine rime, or a feminine rime by a different feminine rime."[12] This rule resulted in the preponderance of three rhyme schemes, though others are possible. (Masculine rhymes are given in lowercase, and feminine in CAPS):[13]
The classical alexandrine was early recognized as having a prose-like effect, for example by Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay.[10] This in part explains the strictness with which its prosodic rules (e.g. medial caesura and end rhyme) were kept; they were felt necessary to preserve its distinction and unity as verse.[15] Nevertheless, several strategies for reducing the strictness of the verse form have been employed over the centuries.
Although used in exceptional cases by some 17th-century French poets,[16] Victor Hugo popularized the alexandrin ternaire (also referred to as trimtre) as an alternative rhythm to the classical alexandrine. His famous self-descriptive line:
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