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Poetry Forum Index -> Poetic Form and Technique

Out to sea (#14 Heroic Couplet)

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Eiregirl



Joined: 21 Jul 2005
Posts: 10230
Location: Chasing a pink bunny
Out to sea (#14 Heroic Couplet)

What is a Heroic Couplet?
First lets talk about what a couplet is. Couplets are any two lines of poetry working together as a unit. The two lines usually rhyme although they do not have to. Remember these words “working together as a unit.” In other words the two lines must in some way, shape or form connect with each other.

There are many forms and variations of couplets such as the Heroic Couplet and the Split Couplet to name a “couple” of them. Couplets can comprise a single stanza of two lines or be put together to make a larger stanza with as many lines as you want. A couplet can be free flowing or vary in line length and/or meter from one form of couplet to the next or with a free flowing couplet you can combine lengths and meters. Couplets are used in other forms of poetry as well…that is to say that couplets are not used specifically in forms of poetry that have “couplet” attached to the name. You can find couplets in villanelles, villonnets, sonnets and epics as well as a number of other forms of poetry.

In this installment in the series we will start with a look at the heroic couplet. Later on in the series we will discuss other couplets.

A heroic couplet is a form commonly used for epic and narrative poetry constructed from a sequence of couplets with rhyming pairs of lines in iambic pentameter. Each set of lines (couplet) is self contained even though they are part of a larger structure.

Structure
As stated above the heroic couplet is set up in pairs iambic pentamenter lines that have a rhyming scheme aa bb cc dd ee ff which can be set in differing lengths of stanza such as aabb ccdd or aabbccddeeffgg and so on.

History

Chaucer introduced this form into English in the fourteenth century. It became vastly popular in the mid sixteen hundreds on into the late seventeen hundreds, literally dominating English language poetry in that time period.

” One simple indicator of how couplet poets think is to notice how infrequently they are memorable epigrammatists (though many modern critics imagine them to be), how seldom in fact they even try to write pithy poems of two lines--or even four or six. Poets such as Jonson, or Dryden, or William Congreve, or Sarah Egerton, or Pope think in larger terms; they are arguers, essayists (as titles of their poems very frequently suggest) rather than apothegmatists or versified Henny Youngmans, and they use the two-line unit simply as a brick for building something bigger. You can think of a lot of famous single lines from couplet poets ("A little learning is a dangerous thing," or "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread") for couplet poets are concise and witty, but few of their observations are memorable as couplets, simply because they do not think that way. Their two-line sense of balance and antithesis is part of a larger combination of contrasts.” J. Paul Hunter Heroic Couplet: Its Rhyme and Reason.

Out to sea

Upon the blue waters the ship set sail.
Sails unfurl out to sea like a white veil.
Unforgiving seas await the tiny ship.
Waves pound against the ships hull like a whip.
Dark skies gather upon the horizon.
The swirling clouds block out the noonday sun.
The ship its mast high is tossed to and fro.
Sails puffed and full as the mighty winds blow.
Its mast still high the ship sails to harbor.
For a rest from the exhausting labor.
The ocean prepares for the ships return.
While calm and beautiful she is stubborn.


A nice little website for more on the Heroic Couplet.
http://earthshine.org/node/411

Post Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:27 am 
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