Literature
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same meter. In literature, couplets are often used to create a sense of completion or to emphasize a point. They can be found in various forms of poetry, including sonnets and epics, and are known for their concise and impactful nature.
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The ordinary poetic stanza rarely attends to its typographical placing quite as self-consciously. A book which gave examples of all of the stanzaic forms used throughout English poetic history would be a very long one, and such a gargantuan project is outside the province of this particular volume. Consequently, our focus is upon the key stanzaic forms of English poetry. To this end, what follows is a survey of the various line-lengths used in the poetic stanza which pauses, where appropriate, to examine the most notable stanzaic forms (ballad stanza, ottava rima , the Spenserian and so on).We shall begin with the shortest stanzaic form, the Couplet . A Couplet is a pair of linked verses which are generally of the same length and which are linked most particularly by rhyme. The most notable mani-festations of the two-line Couplet are found in continuous verse rather than in stanzaic poetry (see Chapter 4 below). However, the Couplet has occasionally been used as a stanzaic form. For instance, the Victorian poet and artist D. G. Rossetti (1828–1882) uses stanzaic Couplets in his poem ‘The White Ship’: But at midnight’s stroke they cleared the bay, And the White Ship furrowed the water-way. The sails were set, and the oars kept tune To the double flight of the ship and the moon: Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead: As white as a lily glimmered she Like a ship’s fair ghost upon the sea. These broken Couplets are not entirely convincing. Here the poem’s form impedes its content, given that the breaks gently interrupt the drive of the story, surely something which is to be avoided in a narrative poem. In fact, these seem like quatrains (that is, the traditional standard four-line stanza) which have been severed for unnecessary effect and would read more con vincingly if set as such: But at midnight’s stroke they cleared the bay, And the White Ship furrowed the water-way.
No longer available |Learn more- Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry Qualls, Claire Waters(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Broadview Press(Publisher)
Each of these is a rhetorical unit within a longer whole, rather like a paragraph within an essay. The poet’s choice among such forms is dictated, at least in part, by the effects that each may produce. Thus the rhyming Couplet often expresses a complete statement within two lines, creating a sense of density of thought, of coherence and closure; it is particularly effective where the writer wishes to set up contrasts, or to achieve the witty compactness of epigram: Of all mad creatures, if the learn’d are right, It is the slaver kills, and not the bite. A fool quite angry is quite innocent: Alas! ’tis ten times worse when they repent. (from Pope, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”) Ottava rima , as its Italian name implies, is an eight-line stanza, with the rhyme scheme abababcc . Like the sonnet, it is long enough to allow the development of a single thought in some detail and complexity, with a concluding Couplet that may extend the central idea or cast it in a wholly unexpected light. W.B. Yeats uses this stanza form in “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Among Schoolchildren.” Though much used by Renaissance poets, it is particularly associated with George Gordon, Lord Byron’s Don Juan , in which the poet exploits to the full its potential for devastating irony and bathos. It is long enough to allow the development of a single thought in some detail and complexity; the concluding Couplet can then, sonnet-like, turn that thought upon its head, or cast it in a wholly unexpected light: Reading Poetry 927 Sagest of women, even of widows, she Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree (His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon). Then for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery.
eBook - PDF- Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy, Claire Waters(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Broadview Press(Publisher)
Each of these is a rhetorical unit within a longer whole, rather like a paragraph within an essay. The poet’s choice among such forms is dictated, at least in part, by the effects that each may produce. Thus the rhyming Couplet often expresses a complete statement within two lines, creating a sense of density of thought, of coherence and closure; it is particularly effective where the writer wishes to set up contrasts, or to achieve the witty compactness of epigram: Of all mad creatures, if the learn’d are right, It is the slaver kills, and not the bite. A fool quite angry is quite innocent: Alas! ’tis ten times worse when they repent. (from Pope, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”) Ottava rima , as its Italian name implies, is an eight-line stanza, with the rhyme scheme abababcc . Like the sonnet, it is long enough to allow the development of a single thought in some detail and complexity, with a concluding Couplet that may extend the central idea or cast it in a wholly unexpected light. W.B. Yeats uses this stanza form in “Sailing to Byzantium” and “Among Schoolchildren.” Though much used by Renaissance poets, it is particularly associated with George Gordon, Lord Byron’s Don Juan , in which the poet exploits to the full its potential for devastating irony and bathos. It is long enough to allow the development of a single thought in some detail and complexity; the concluding Couplet can then, sonnet-like, turn that thought upon its head, or cast it in a wholly unexpected light: Sagest of women, even of widows, she Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree (His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon). Then for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery.
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