An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted by iambic pentameter (5-foot verse). In non-Anglo-Saxon or French contexts, the term dodecasyllable is often used.
In syllabic verse, such as that used i...
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An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted by iambic pentameter (5-foot verse). In non-Anglo-Saxon or French contexts, the term dodecasyllable is often used.
In syllabic verse, such as that used in French literature, an alexandrine is a line of twelve syllables. Most commonly, the line is divided into two equal parts by a caesura between the sixth and seventh syllables. Alternatively, the line is divided into three four-syllable sections by two caesuras.
The dramatic works of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine are typically composed of rhyming alexandrine couplets. (The caesura after the 6th syllable is here marked || )
Baudelaire's Les Bijoux (The Jewels) is a typical example of the use of the alexandrine in 19th-century French poetry :...
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