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
Alexandrine these caesurae. However, at no point did the newer line "replace" the older; rather, they were used concurrently, often in the same poem. This loosening process eventually led to "vers libéré" and finally to "vers libre". In English verse, "alexandrine" is typically used to mean "iambic hexameter": Whereas the French alexandrine is syllabic, the English is accentual-syllabic; and the central caesura (a defining feature of the French) is not always rigidly preserved in English. Though English alexandrines have occasionally provided the sole metrical line for a poem, for example in lyric poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Sir