Alexandrine
- Named after the ever-so-heroic Alexander the Great.
- It is a line of verse made up of six iambs.
- Alexandrine is a verse form that is the leading measure in French poetry.
- It consists of a line of 12 syllables with major stresses on the 6th syllable and on the last syllable.
- The term probably derived from the early use of the verse in the French Roman d’Alexandre, a collection of romances that was compiled in the 12th century about the adventures of Alexander the Great.
- In English versification, the alexandrine is also called Iambic hexameter.
- French alexandrine is syllabic, the English is accentual-syllabic.
- In English it is used, eg: as the last line of Spenserian stanza or as a variant in a poem of heroic couplets, rarely in a whole work.
- Eg: An Essay On Criticism by Alexander Pope, To Some Birds Flown Away by Victor Hugo.
