French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
French alexandrine de Baïf (lyric), and Pierre de Ronsard. Later, Pierre Corneille introduced its use in comedy. It was metrically stricter, allowing no epic caesura: Typically, each hemistich also holds one secondary accent which may occur on any of the first five syllables, most frequently on the third; this frequently balanced four-part structure resulted in one of several monikers for the line: ' (in contradistinction to the ' or " described below). Often called the "classical alexandrine", ', or ', it became the dominant long line of French verse up to the end of the 19th century, and was "elevated to the