Prosody (poetry)

Prosody has been defined as that part of the study of language which deals with the forms of metrical composition. It was once considered as a subdivision of grammar. This article therefore considers the various forms, the effects they are intended to achieve, and the extent to which poets conform to them.

Verse forms

A verse form, in European prosody, is a combination of metre, length of line, and, rhyme scheme, or, in the case of alliterative verse, the rules for alliteration. There may also be important conventions such as the use of a caesura, though some conventions, such as end-stopping (a significant pause at the end of a line or couplet), are likely to be more ephemeral than the main forms.

Common forms in Western European culture

Blank verse is normally considered to be verse which conforms to a metrical scheme, but not to a rhyme scheme or alliterative scheme.

Heroic verse, in post-classical poetry is normally blank verse in iambic pentameters (five feet of two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed) or alexandrines (six iambic feet). It is normally considered suitable for narrative verse.

Heroic couplets are heroic verse rhymed in couplets.

The Sonnet is a rhymed verse form of fourteen lines. It is used for poems intended to be intense and lingered over.

Rhyme royal is verse (normally iambic pentameters) made up of stanzas rhymed ababbcc. This is another form that has been frequently used for narrative in Italy, France and Britain.

The villanelle is a rhyme scheme not associated with any particular metre. It consists of five stanzas of three lines each, with a final quatrain. There are only two rhymes throughout. The first and third lines of the first stanza alternate as the third line of the others until the final quatrain, when they appear as the final couplet. (A well-known example is "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, but many others are more light-hearted.)

The Spenserian stanza is of eight iambic pentameters and an alexandrine, rhyming ababbcbcc.

The haiku is a Japanese form which has been adopted in the west. Though not always conforming to the original rules, it does usually keep to the format of five, seven and five syllables. See main article.