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 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