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The Stanza

We have defined rhythm as more or less regular alternations of similar units. Of the units of verse rhythm the following have been named: the syllable, the foot, the line and finally the stanza.

The stanza is the largest unit in verse. It is composed of a number of lines having a definite measure and rhyming system which is repeated throughout the poem.

The stanza is generally built up on definite principles with regard to the number of lines, the character of the metre and the rhyming pattern.

There are many widely recognized stanza patterns in English poetry, but we shall name only the following.

1) The heroic couplet — a stanza that consists of two iambic pentameters with the rhyming pattern aa.

Specialists in versification divide the history of the development of this stanza into two periods: the first is the period of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and the second the period of Marlowe, Chapman and other Elizabethan poets. The first period is characterized by the marked flexibility of the verse, the relative freedom of its rhythmic arrangement in which there are all kinds of modifications. The second period is characterized by rigid demands for the purity of its rhythmical structure. The heroic couplet, beginning with the 16th century and particularly in the poetry of Spencer, was enchained by strict rules of versification, and lost its flexibility and freedom of arrangement.

The heroic couplet was later mostly used in elevated forms of poetry, in epics and odes. Alexander Pope used the heroic couplet in his "The Rape of the Lock" with a satirical purpose, that of parodying the epic. Here are two couplets from this poem:

"Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,

And screams of horror rent the affrighted skies.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast,

When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last;"

2) The next model of stanza which once enjoyed popularity was the Spenterian stanza, named after Edmund Spencer, the 16th century poet who first used this type of stanza in his "Fairy Queene." It consists of nine lines, the first eight of which are iambic pentameters and the ninth is one foot longer, that is an iambic hexameter. The rhyming scheme is ababbcbcc. Byron's "Childe Harold" is written in this stanza:

1. Awake, ye sons of Spain! Awake! Advance! ( a )

2. Lo! Chivalry, your ancient goddess, cries, ( b )

3. But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance, ( a )

4. Nor shakes her crimson plumage in (he skies: ( b )

5. Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies, ( b ),

6. And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar: (c)

7. In every peal she calls — "Awake! Arise!" ( b )

8. Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore, (c)

9. When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore? ( c )

3) The stanza named ottava rima has also been popular in English poetry. It is composed of eight iambic pentameters, the rhyming scheme being abababcc. This type of stanza was borrowed from Italian poetry and was widely used by Philip Sidney and other poets of the 16th century. Then it fell into disuse but was revived at the end of the 18th century. Byron used it in his poem "Beppo" and in "Don Juan." Here it is:

1. "With all its sinful doings, I must say, ( a )

2. That Italy's a pleasant place to me, ( b )

3. Who love to see the Sun shine every day, ( a )

4. And vines (not nail'd to walls) from tree to tree ( b )

5. Festoon'd much like the back scene of a play (a)

6. Or melodrame, which people flock to see, ( b )

7. When the first act is ended by a dance (c)

8. In vineyards copied from the South of France." (c)

4) A looser form of stanza is the ballad stanza. This is generally an alternation of iambic tetrameters with iambic dimeters (or trimeters) and the rhyming scheme is abcb; that is, the tetrameters are not rhymed — the trimeters are. True, there are variants of the ballad stanza, particularly in the length of the stanza.

The ballad, which is a very old, perhaps the oldest form of English verse, is a short story in rhyme, sometimes with dialogue and direct speech. In the poem of Beowulf there are constant suggestions that the poem was made up from a collection of much earlier ballads. Modern ballads in form are imitations of the old English ballad. Here is a sample of the ballad stanza:

"They took a plough and plough'd him down (a)

Put clods upon his head; ( b )

And they had sworn a solemn oath (c)

John Barleycorn was dead." (6) (Robert Burns)

In some of the variants of the ballad stanza the rhyming scheme is abab, that is the stanza becomes a typical quatrain.

5) One of the most popular stanzas, which bears the name of stanza only conventionally, is the sonnet. This is not a part of a larger unit, it is a complete independent work of a definite literary genre. However, by tradition and also due to its strict structural design this literary genre is called a stanza.

The English sonnet is composed of fourteen iambic pentameters with the following rhyming scheme: ababcdcdefefgg, that is three quatrains with cross rhymes and a couplet at the end. The English sonnet was borrowed from Italian poetry, but on English soil it underwent structural and sometimes certain semantic changes.

The Italian sonnet was composed of two quatrains with a framing rhyme abba. These two quatrains formed the octave. It was followed by a sestette, i.e., six lines divided into two tercets, i.e. three line units with cde rhyming in each, or variants, namely, cdcdcd or cdedce and others.

The semantic aspect of the Italian sonnet was also strictly regularized. The first quatrain of the octave was to lay the main idea before the reader; the second quatrain was to expand the idea of the first quatrain by giving details or illustrations or proofs. So the octave had not only a structural but also a semantic pattern: the eight lines were to express one idea, a thesis.

The same applies to the sestette. The first three lines were to give an idea opposite to the one expressed in the octave, a kind of antithesis, and the last three lines to be a synthesis of the ideas expressed in the octave and the first tercet. This synthesis was often expressed in the last two lines of the sonnet and these two lines therefore were called epigrammatic lines.

The English, often called the Shakespearean sonnet has retained many of the features of its Italian parent. The division into octave and sestette is observed in many sonnets, although the sestette is not always divided into two tercets. The rhyming scheme is simplified and is now expressed by the formula ababcdcdefefgg given above.

The most clearly observable characteristic feature of the sonnet on the content plane is the epigram-like last line (or last two lines).

Sonnets were very popular in England during the sixteenth century. Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney and many other English poets of this period indulged in writing sonnets, and it is significant that during this period an enormous number were written. Wyatt adhered strictly to the Italian model. Surrey modified it and it was this modification that Shakespeare used.

The Shakespearean sonnets, which are known all over the world, are a masterpiece of sonnet composition. All 154 sonnets express the feelings of the poet towards his beloved, his friend and his patron. Even those sonnets, the main idea of which is by no means limited to the lyrical laying out of the feelings of the poet (as Sonnets Nos. 66, 21 and others), still pay tribute to the conventional form of the sonnet by mentioning the object of the poet's feelings.

The types of English stanzas enumerated in no way exhaust the variety of this macro-unit in the rhythmical arrangement of the utterance. The number of types of stanzas is practically unlimited.

We have chosen only those which have won wide recognition and are taken up by many poets as a convenient mould into which new content may be poured. But there are many interesting models which still remain unique and therefore cannot yet be systematized.

An interesting survey of stanza models in the English poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been made by Y. Vorobyov in his thesis on "Some Stanza Peculiarities in 18th and 19th Century English Verse."

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