stanza forms

7/27/2019 Stanza Forms

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English Literary Forms

ST NZ FORMS


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Stanza - Forms

The Chaucerian Stanza / Rhyme Royal

The Ottava Rhyma

The Spensarian Stanza

The Terza Rhyma

The Quatrain

The heroic Couplet

The Octosyllabic Couplet

Satire


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The Chaucerian Stanza

Rhyme RoyalKing James I of Scotland in 15th

CenturyKings Choir

Seven Iambic Pentameter lines

ab; ab b; c c

Suited for narrative verse ( Chaucers

Canterbury Tales; Shakespeares The Rape ofLucrece; William Morris The Earthly Paradise)


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Example

The aim of all is but to nurse the life

With honour, wealth and ease, in waning age;

And in this aim there is such thwarting strife

That one for all or all for one we gage:

As life for honour in fell battle's rage;

Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost

The death of all, and all together lost


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The Ottava Rhyma

First used in Englandearly 16thSir ThomasWyatthis frequent visits to Italy

Well suited for narrative purpose, satiric purpose

Eight iambic pentameter lines a b; a b; a b ; c c

Six lines rhyme alternately with a couplet at the

end Byrons Don Juan ; Shelleys The Witch of Atlas ;

Keats The Pot of Basil


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Example

Mans love is of mans life a thing apart,Tiswomans whole existence; man may range

The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;

Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange

Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,

And few there are whom these cannot estrange;

Men have, all these resources, we but one,

To love again, and be again undone.


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Spenserian Stanza

SpenserThe Faerie Queen

Eight Iambic Pentameter lines and a line of twelvesyllables ( Alexandrine) at the end

a b a b ; b c b c ; c

Difficultone rhyme is repeated four times; anotherthree times

Long narrative and descriptive poems but Spenser usedit

James Thomson : Castle of Indolence; Byron : ChildHarold; Keats : The Eve of St.Agnes; Shelley : The Revoltof Islam, Adonais; Tennyson : The Lotos-Eaters


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Example

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!

O, weep for Adonais! though our tears

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

And thou, sad Hour, selected from all yearsTo mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,

And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me

Died Adonais; till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto eternity!"


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The Terza Rhyma

Italian verse form

Dante : The Divine Comedy

Group of three lines forming one unit ( tercet)

may be run or closed; runis frequently used--each tercet is linked with the other

Rhyme of two tercets : a b a, b c b

ShelleyOde to the West Wind ; ByronProphecy of Dante; BrowningThe Statue andthe Bust


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ExampleO Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being

Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill


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The Quatrain

Stanza of four iambic lines with alternate

rhymes

Variation in rhyme, length

Lines may be Pentameter, Tetrameter or even

shorter

Most of the ballads; Ballad-stanza

Coleridge: Rime of the Ancient mariner

Keats : La Belle Dame Sans merci


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Example

The sun came upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.


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The Heroic Couplet

Two iambic pentameter lines rhyming

Heroic : Iambic pentameter verse was first used forepic or heroic poetry

Augustan Age

Each linefive feet / ten syllables; second syllable ofeach foot accented; pause after the fourth and beforethe sixth ( Caesura)

Two kinds : closed or run

First used by ChaucerSpenser, MarloweWaller andDenhambut Pope and Dryden led to its gloriousphaseused as an instrument of satire, other works


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Dryden : Absalom and Achitophel;

MacFlecknoe

Pope : Rape of the Lock; Dunciad; Essay on

Man; Essay on Criticism

Ease, vigor, strength, sweetness

Dryden often uses run-on; Popeclosed

Even Byron, Shelley, Keats ( Lamia)run on

( enjambed) ; Browning, Morris, Swinburne


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Samples

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.

All human things are subject to decay,And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young

Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:

In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute

Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.


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Octosyllabic Couplet

Differs from Heroic

Each lineeight syllables / four feet

Difficult ; mechanical ; tiresome; long narrative poems

Samuel ButlerSir Hudibras

Coleridge : Christabel


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For his Religion, it was fit

To match his learning and his wit;

'Twas Presbyterian true blue;

For he was of that stubborn crew

Of errant saints, whom all men grant

To be the true Church Militant;

Such as do build their faith upon

The holy text of pike and gun;


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Satire

Latin-Satura Lanks

Literary work that searches out the faults of men orinstitutions in order to hold them upto ridiculeLong

The True end of satire is the amendment of vices by

correctionDryden The expression in adequate terms of sense of

amusement or disgust excited by the ridiculous orunseemly, provided that humor is a distinctlyrecognized element, and that the utterance is investedwith literary form. Without humor satire is invective;without literary form, it is mere clownish jeeringRichard Garnett


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Satire

Literary form of expression

Disgust at the ridiculous, the ugly, the foolish

Humor Sincere desire to correct or reform

Author clothes his attackallegory, fable, mock-

heroic, parody, burlesqueConcentration, brevity intensify the effect


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Satire

Personal : aimed at Individual; ephemeral

Impersonal : Passes from individual to the Type ; eternaland universal ; wider sweep; individuals are used asexamples of the vices and follies that infect the Age

Roman were the first satirists ( mankind) Persius (indignantly lashes) Horace ( laughs at) Juvenal ( hatesand despises)

Middle AgesChurch and WomenChaucer, Langland

Age of MiltonPolitics Dryden, PopePersonal and Political enemies; later to

impersonal


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Swift : Gullivers Travels one of the mostappalling exposures of human weakness--strange worlds , precision, likeness between

the real and imaginary FieldingContemporary societys follies,

foibles, weaknesses, vicesreformative (Amelia)

Smollettmankind in general ( reduced to thelevel of insectes)


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18thzenith

19thnumber of vigorous satiristsByronEnglish Bards and Scotch Reviewers ; Don Juan

( epic satire on society); The Vision of Judgment (George IIIbase and mean)

Dickens, Thackeray ( hypocrisy, materialism,greed, snobbery in the society)

Carlyle, Ruskin, Mathew Arnold

G B Shaw, Huxley, Orwell


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Examples

This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies,who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of ourown size, and their defects not to be seen through amagnifying glass, where we find by experiment that thesmoothest and whitest skins look rough and course, and ill

coloredMy little friend GrildrigI cannot but conclude the bulk of

your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odiousVermin that Nature has ever suffered to crawl upon thesurface of the earth.

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others

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