Strophe
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (April 2009) |
A strophe (
In its original Greek setting, "strophe, antistrophe and epode were a kind of stanza framed only for the music", as John Milton wrote in the preface to Samson Agonistes, with the strophe chanted by a Greek chorus as it moved from right to left across the scene.
Etymology
Strophe (from
Poetic structure
In a more general sense, the strophe is a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based, with the strophe usually being identical to the stanza in modern poetry and its arrangement and recurrence of rhymes giving it its character. But the Greeks called a combination of verse-periods a system, giving the name "strophe" to such a system only when it was repeated once or more in unmoved form.
A simple form of Greek strophe is the Sapphic strophe. Like all Greek verse, it is composed of alternating long and short syllables (symbolized by — for long, u for short and x for either long or short) in this case arranged in the following manner:[1]
— u — x — u u — u — —
— u — x — u u — u — —
— u — x — u u — u — x — u u — —
Far more complex forms are found in the odes of
In choral poetry, it is common to find the strophe followed by a metrically identical
creating an AAB form.Origins and development
It is said that
Variant forms
With the development of Greek
Reproductions
The forms in modern English verse which reproduce most exactly the impression aimed at by the ancient ode strophe are the elaborate rhymed stanzas of such poems as Keats' Ode to a Nightingale or Matthew Arnold's The Scholar-Gipsy.
A strophic form of poetry called
Contemporary usage
The term strophe is used in modern and post-modern criticism, to indicate "long non-isomorphic units".[3] The term "stanza [is used] for more regular ones" (ibid). This appropriation of the ancient term is useful, as contemporary poetry is a frequent turns (the original meaning of Strophe), and it avoids relying upon the invention of new terminology such as 'word clumps'.
See also
References
- ^ William S. Annis. Introduction to Greek Meter. Aoidoi.org January 2006. Page 11.
- ^ Edwin D. Floyd. "Some more or less technical observations on Greek rhythm." class material for University of Pittsburgh: Classics 1130. http://www.pitt.edu/~edfloyd/Class1130/strophe.html accessed January 6, 2015.
- ^ Page 1360, Entry 'STROPHE', The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: Fourth Edition, edited by Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul Rouzer
Sources
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Strophe". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1042. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the