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
Alexandrine Alexandrine Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French "Roman d'Alexandre" of 1170, although it had already been used several decades earlier in "Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne". The foundation of most alexandrines consists of two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each, separated by a caesura (a word break, though often realized as a stronger syntactic break): However, no tradition remains this simple. Each applies additional constraints (such as obligatory stress