Spenserian stanza

verse form created by Edmund Spenser

The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene.[1] Each stanza contains nine lines in total. The first eight lines are in iambic pentameter, that is consist of ten syllables, followed by a single alexandrine line in iambic hexameter, that is are made up of twelve syllables.[2] The rhyme scheme of these lines is "a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c."[3]

Edmund Spenser, English Renaissance poet and author of The Fairie Queene

Many poets used the stanza after Spenser, for example Lord Byron (Chlide Harold's Pilgrimage), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Adonais), John Keats (The Eve of St. Agnes)[4] and Alfred Tennyson (The Lotos-Eaters). Spenserian stanza remained a typical English form and it was never much popular outside England. Only few poets employed it in Central Europe, for example Juliusz Słowacki,[5] Jan Kasprowicz and Jaroslav Vrchlický.

References

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  1. "Spenserian stanza". The Free Dictionary/Farlex. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  2. Joseph Berg Esenwein, Mary Eleanor Roberts, The Art of Versification. Revised Edition, Springfield 1921, p. 113.
  3. Cara Batema. "How to Write a Spenserian Poem". Hearst Seattle Media, LLC. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  4. Spenserian Stanza at Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  5. Wiktor Jarosław Darasz, Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim, Kraków 2003, p. 152.