Alexandrine introduce phrasal accentuation, or rigorously observe the medial caesura, as in French." Common usage within the literatures of European languages is broader still, embracing lines syllabic, accentual-syllabic, and (inevitably) stationed ambivalently between the two; lines of 12, 13, or even 14 syllables; lines with obligatory, predominant, and optional caesurae. Although alexandrines occurred in French verse as early as the 12th century, they were slightly looser rhythmically, and vied with the "décasyllabe" and "octosyllabe" for cultural prominence and use in various genres. "The alexandrine came into its own in the middle of the sixteenth century with the poets of the Pléiade
Fourteener (poetry) (p. 224). In a more extended analysis (pp. 231–2), he comments: The medial break in the alexandrine, though it may do well enough in French, becomes intolerable in a language with such a tyrannous stress-accent as ours: the line struts. The fourteener has a much pleasanter movement, but a totally different one: the line dances a jig. The poets Surrey, Tuberville, Gascoigne, Balassone, Golding and others all used the Poulter's Measure, the rhyming fourteener with authority. Fourteener (poetry) In poetry, a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of seven iambic feet for which the