In poetry, a hendecasyllable (sometimes hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poetry, and the newer of which are syllabic or accentual-syllabic and used in medieval and modern poetry.
In classical poetry, "hendecasyllable" or "hendecasyllabic" may refer to any of three distinct 11-syllable Aeolic meters,[1] used first in Ancient Greece and later, with little modification, by Roman poets.[2]
Aeolic meters are characterized by an Aeolic base × × followed by a choriamb– u u –; where – = a long syllable, u = a short syllable, and × = an anceps, that is, a syllable either long or short.[2] The three Aeolic hendecasyllables (with base and choriamb in bold) are:
This line is named after Phalaecus, a minor poet probably of the 4th century BC, who used it in epigrams; though he did not invent it, since it had earlier been used by Sappho and Anacreon.[3]
The Phalaecian hendecasyllable was a favorite of Catullus; it was also very frequently used by Martial.[4] An example from Catullus is the first poem in his collection (with formal equivalent, substituting English stress for Latin length):
Cui dōnō lepidum novum libellum āridā modo pūmic(e) expolītum? Cornēlī, tibi: namque tū solēbās meās ess(e) aliquid putāre nūgās[5]
To whom dedicate this, my charming new book, Freshly burnished with pumice stone to fine sheen? To Cornelius! you who always used to Think my gobbledygook was, well, was something.
The aeolic base (i.e., the first two syllables of the line) with – – is by far the most common in Catullus, and in later poets such as Statius and Martial was the only one used, but occasionally Catullus uses u – or – u as in lines 2 and 4 above. There is usually a caesura in the line after the 5th or 6th syllable.[6]
In the first part of his poetry collection, Catullus uses the Phalaecian hendecasyllable as given above in 41 poems. In addition, in two of his poems (55 and 58b) Catullus uses a variation of the metre, in which the 4th and 5th syllables can sometimes be contracted into a single long syllable. In poem 55 there are twelve decasyllables and ten normal lines:[7]
Ōrāmus, sī forte non molestum (e)st, dēmōnstrēs ubi sint tuae tenebrae...
We beg, if perhaps it is not a nuisance, that you should show us where your lair is...
Here the Aeolic base is truncated to a single anceps. This meter typically appears as the first two lines of an Alcaic stanza.[2] (For an English example, see §English, below.)
Again, the Aeolic base is truncated. This meter typically appears as the first three lines of a Sapphic stanza, though it was also sometimes used in stichic verse, for example by Seneca and Boethius.[2]Sappho wrote many of the stanzas subsequently named after her, for example (with formal equivalent, substituting English stress for Greek length):
He, it seems to me, is completely godlike: Ah, that man who's sitting across from you, there, Leaning in and listening to your sweet voice, Charmed by your laughter.
—Sappho: Fragment 31, lines 1-4
Italian
The hendecasyllable (Italian: endecasillabo) is the principal metre in Italian poetry. Its defining feature is a constant stress on the tenth syllable, so that the number of syllables in the verse may vary, equaling eleven in the usual case where the final word is stressed on the penultimate syllable. The verse also has a stress preceding the caesura, on either the fourth or sixth syllable. The first case is called endecasillabo a minore, or lesser hendecasyllable, and has the first hemistich equivalent to a quinario; the second is called endecasillabo a maiore, or greater hendecasyllable, and has a settenario as the first hemistich.[10]
There is a strong tendency for hendecasyllabic lines to end with feminine rhymes (causing the total number of syllables to be eleven, hence the name), but ten-syllable lines ("Ciò che 'n grembo a Benaco star non può") and twelve-syllable lines ("Ergasto mio, perché solingo e tacito") are encountered as well. Lines of ten or twelve syllables are more common in rhymed verse; versi sciolti, which rely more heavily on a pleasant rhythm for effect, tend toward a stricter eleven-syllable format. As a novelty, lines longer than twelve syllables can be created by the use of certain verb forms and affixed enclitic pronouns ("Ottima è l'acqua; ma le piante abbeverinosene.").
Additional accents beyond the two mandatory ones provide rhythmic variation and allow the poet to express thematic effects. A line in which accents fall consistently on even-numbered syllables ("Al còr gentìl rempàira sèmpre amóre") is called iambic (giambico) and may be a greater or lesser hendecasyllable. This line is the simplest, commonest and most musical but may become repetitive, especially in longer works. Lesser hendecasyllables often have an accent on the seventh syllable ("fàtta di giòco in figùra d'amóre"). Such a line is called dactylic (dattilico) and its less pronounced rhythm is considered particularly appropriate for representing dialogue. Another kind of greater hendecasyllable has an accent on the third syllable ("Se Mercé fosse amìca a' miei disìri") and is known as anapestic (anapestico). This sort of line has a crescendo effect and gives the poem a sense of speed and fluidity.
It is considered improper for the lesser hendecasyllable to use a word accented on its antepenultimate syllable (parola sdrucciola) for its mid-line stress. A line like "Più non sfavìllano quegli òcchi néri", which delays the caesura until after the sixth syllable, is not considered a valid hendecasyllable.
Most classical Italian poems are composed in hendecasyllables, including the major works of Dante, Francesco Petrarca, Ludovico Ariosto, and Torquato Tasso. The rhyme systems used include terza rima, ottava, sonnet and canzone, and some verse forms use a mixture of hendecasyllables and shorter lines. From the early 16th century onward, hendecasyllables are often used without a strict system, with few or no rhymes, both in poetry and in drama. This is known as verso sciolto. An early example is Le Api ("the bees") by Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, written around 1517 and published in 1525 (with formal equivalent paraphrase which mirrors the original's syllabic counts, varied caesurae, and line- and hemistich-final stress profiles):
Mentr'era per cantare i vostri doni Con alte rime, o Verginette caste, Vaghe Angelette delle erbose rive, Preso dal sonno, in sul spuntar dell'Alba M'apparve un coro della vostra gente, E dalla lingua, onde s'accoglie il mele, Sciolsono in chiara voce este parole: O spirto amico, che dopo mill'anni, E cinque cento, rinovar ti piace E le nostre fatiche, e i nostri studi, Fuggi le rime, e'l rimbombar sonoro.[11]
While your delightful gifts | I aimed at singing In lofty rime | O little vestal virgins, Sweet little seraphim | of grassy margins, Sleep ravished me | in the first light of morning, And I beheld a chorus | of your people, Who, with their tongues | which lately sipped at honey, Buzzed forth in the clear air | this earnest message: "O friendly soul who | (after thousand summers And more five hundred) | beguiles us with singing Our industrious toil | our balmy study… Abandon rime | and its rebounding echo!"
Like other early Italian-language tragedies, the Sophonisba of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1515) is in blank hendecasyllables. Later examples can be found in the Canti of Giacomo Leopardi, where hendecasyllables are alternated with settenari.
The eleven-syllable line is normally a line of 5+6 syllables with medial caesura, primary stresses on the fourth and tenth syllables, and feminine endings on both half-lines.[14] Although the form can accommodate a fully iambic line, there is no such tendency in practice, word stresses falling variously on any of the initial syllables of each half-line.[14]
o o o S s | o o o o S s o=any syllable, S=stressed syllable, s=unstressed syllable
A popular form of Polish literature that employs the hendecasyllable is the Sapphic stanza: 11/11/11/5.
The Polish hendecasyllable is often combined with an 8-syllable line: 11a/8b/11a/8b. Such a stanza was used by Mickiewicz in his ballads, as in the following example (with formal equivalent paraphrase):
Ktokolwiek będziesz w Nowogródzkiej stronie, Do Płużyn ciemnego boru Wjechawszy, pomnij zatrzymać twe konie, Byś się przypatrzył jezioru.[15]
Visitor passing Novogrudok's courses In Płużyn forest's umbration, Once come, remember to rein in your horses: View the lake in admiration.
The hendecasyllable (Portuguese: hendecassílabo) is a common meter in Portuguese poetry. The best-known Portuguese poem composed in hendecasyllables is Luís de Camões' Lusiads, which begins as follows:
As armas, & os barões assinalados, Que da Occidental praya Lusitana, Por mares, nunca de antes navegados, Passaram, ainda alem da Taprobana, Em perigos, & guerras esforçados, Mais do que prometia a força humana. Entre gente remota edificaram Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram.[16]
Armes, and the Men above the vulgar File, Who from the Western Lusitanian shore Past ev'n beyond the Trapobanian-Isle, Through Seas which never Ship has sayld before; Who (brave in action, patient in long Toyle, Beyond what strength of humane nature bore) 'Mongst Nations, under other Stars, acquir'd A modern Scepter which to Heaven aspir'd.[17]
In Portuguese, the hendecasyllable meter is often called "decasyllable" (decassílabo), even when the work in question uses overwhelmingly feminine rhymes (as is the case with the Lusiads). This is due to Portuguese prosody considering verses to end at the last stressed syllable, thus the aforementioned verses are effectively decasyllabic according to Portuguese scansion.
Spanish
The hendecasyllable (Spanish: endecasílabo) is less pervasive in Spanish poetry than in Italian or Portuguese, but it is commonly used with Italianate verse forms like sonnets and ottava rima (as found, for example, in Alonso de Ercilla's epic La Araucana).
Spanish dramatists often use hendecasyllables in tandem with shorter lines like heptasyllables, as can be seen in Rosaura's opening speech from Calderón's La vida es sueño:
Hipogrifo violento, Que corriste parejas con el viento, ¿Dónde, rayo sin liama, Pájaro sin matiz, pez sin escama, Y bruto sin instinto Natural, al confuso laberinto Destas desnudas peñas Te desbocas, arrastras y despeñas?[18]
Wild hippogriff swift speeding, Thou that does run, the wingèd winds exceeding, Bolt which no flash illumes, Fish without scales, bird without shifting plumes, And brute awhile bereft Of natural instinct, why to this wild cleft, The labyrinth of naked rocks, dost sweep Unreined, uncurbed, to plunge thee down the steep?[19]
The term "hendecasyllable" most often refers to an imitation of Greek or Latin metrical lines, notably by Alfred Tennyson, Swinburne, and Robert Frost ("For Once Then Something"). Contemporary American poets Annie Finch ("Lucid Waking") and Patricia Smith ("The Reemergence of the Noose") have published recent examples. In English, which lacks phonemic length, poets typically substitute stressed syllables for long, and unstressed syllables for short. Tennyson, however, attempted to maintain the quantitative features of the meter (while supporting them with concurrent stress) in his Alcaic stanzas, the first two lines of which are Alcaic hendecasyllables:
O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages;[20]
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 Pèlerinage de Charlemagne. The foundation of most alexandrines consists of two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each, separated by a caesura :
o o o o o o | o o o o o o o=any syllable; |=caesura
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows :
In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.
The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form of four lines. Originally composed in quantitative verse and unrhymed, since the Middle Ages imitations of the form typically feature rhyme and accentual prosody. It is "the longest lived of the Classical lyric strophes in the West".
Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed or constrained number of syllables per line, while stress, quantity, or tone play a distinctly secondary role—or no role at all—in the verse structure. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as French or Finnish, as opposed to stress-timed languages such as English, in which accentual verse and accentual-syllabic verse are more common.
Iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. "Pentameter" indicates that each line has five "feet".
The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205–184 BC.
The Alcaic stanza is a Greek lyrical meter, an Aeolic verse form traditionally believed to have been invented by Alcaeus, a lyric poet from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, about 600 BC. The Alcaic stanza and the Sapphic stanza named for Alcaeus' contemporary, Sappho, are two important forms of Classical poetry. The Alcaic stanza consists of two Alcaic hendecasyllables, followed by an Alcaic enneasyllable and an Alcaic decasyllable.
Decasyllable is a poetic meter of ten syllables used in poetic traditions of syllabic verse. In languages with a stress accent, it is the equivalent of pentameter with iambs or trochees.
Glyconic is a form of meter in classical Greek and Latin poetry. The glyconic line is the most basic and most commonly used form of Aeolic verse, and it is often combined with others.
This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in particular, see Glossary of poetry terms.
This is a glossary of poetry terms.
Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres".
Aeolic verse is a classification of Ancient Greek lyric poetry referring to the distinct verse forms characteristic of the two great poets of Archaic Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed in their native Aeolic dialect. These verse forms were taken up and developed by later Greek and Roman poets and some modern European poets.
The ionic is a four-syllable metrical unit (metron) of light-light-heavy-heavy that occurs in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. According to Hephaestion it was known as the Ionicos because it was used by the Ionians of Asia Minor; and it was also known as the Persicos and was associated with Persian poetry. Like the choriamb, in Greek quantitative verse the ionic never appears in passages meant to be spoken rather than sung. "Ionics" may refer inclusively to poetry composed of the various metrical units of the same total quantitative length that may be used in combination with ionics proper: ionics, choriambs, and anaclasis. Equivalent forms exist in English poetry and in classical Persian poetry.
Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.
The French alexandrine is a syllabic poetic metre of 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 Sapphic stanza is the only stanzaic form adapted from Greek and Latin poetry to be used widely in Polish literature. It was introduced during the Renaissance, and since has been used frequently by many prominent poets. The importance of the Sapphic stanza for Polish literature lies not only in its frequent use, but also in the fact that it formed the basis of many new strophes, built up of hendecasyllables and pentasyllables.
Anaclasis is a feature of poetic metre, in which a long and a short syllable exchange places in a metrical pattern.
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