The Heroic Couplet Poetry Form
August 1, 2008
1. Rhyming pair of lines
2. The meter can be iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter.
3. ”The pentameter couplet has ten syllables with alternating stresses.”
4. Rhyme sceme is aabbcc…
5. “The heroic couplet, so-called, denoted that it was a form in which a high subject matter could be written. This was the form often used for translation of epic poetry from the classical Latin and Greek.”
6. “It works by adapting the old Chaucerian line and allowing a strong pause or caesura in middle of the line.”
7. “The caesura usually comes after the fifth or sixth syllable. Its sharp rhymes and regular beat made it widely used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries for epigrammatic and satirical poetry.”
Strand and Boland The Making of a Poem Page 121
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: carolina, epic poetry, epics, Greek, heroic couplet, Latin, maine, poems, poet, poetry, poetry form, poetry structure.
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