ALEXANDRINE verses: origin and examples

The poetry with a multitude of resources to express itself and within it we can find different peculiarities that make it up as what we know today. Something that cannot be missing to talk about poetry is the existence of verses and these, depending on their length and meter, can be divided into different categories. This time in a PROFESSOR we want to focus on the Alexandrian verses, their origin and examples so you can learn more about them.

The verses are an essential part of poetry, these are each of the lines in which the texts are divided. Depending on the number of syllables they have, we can classify them into different types.

Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two large groups of verses, those ofminor art and major art. The first of them, those of minor art, are those that do not have more than eight syllables. For their part, the verses of major art will be those that are above these eight syllables.

Now, within this classification that only attends to the number of syllables we can find different types of verses. In the present case, we will focus on the Alexandrians.

Characteristics of an Alexandrian verse

• The Alexandrian verses are of French origin, they are verses of major art since they have 14 syllables. These are in turn divided into two hemistichs of 7 syllables each one of them. In other words, the Alexandrians are verses divided into two equal parts of 7 syllables each that make up a single verse.
• These hemistichs are the logical division based on the respiration and metric since they were intended to be recited.
• Although at present the rhyme can be consonant or assonance, originally they were conceived as verses of rhyme.

It's one of the verses older. Born at the dawn of 13th century in France and its name is due to two poets from that country: Alexandre de Paris and Gautier de Châtillon. These two authors used this type of verse to give structure to two poems dealing with the exploits of Alexander the Great. Alexandre de Paris wrote Le Roman de Alexandre and Gautier de Châtillon Alexandreis. Due to this, the verses of this type happen to denominate like Alexandrinos in the whole world.

During that time the Iberian Peninsula was experiencing a ecclesiastical reform which brought with it new ways of understanding the clergy, especially in the kingdom of Castile. It will be here where these verses take on more weight thanks to Mester of clergy. Alexandrian verses were used to compose these poems that expanded rapidly during the 12th and 14th centuries. The poems collected in the Mester of clergy they dealt with religious subjects. Their novelty lay in the incorporation of new metrics, they were written in the Romance language and presented a renewal of language never seen before.

In our country the greatest exponents of the use of this type of verse during the Middle Ages were Archpriest of Hita (Juan Ruiz) and Gonzalo de Berceo. Its use would decline with the incorporation of other models that would appear in the 15th century, making them almost disappear. Despite this, we can find a recovery of them from the 19th century, especially in the figure of Ruben Dario.

Alexandrian verses they are easy to recognize Taking into account the characteristics that we have indicated, for this reason and so that you can fix your concepts we want to show you some examples developed in poems from different times.

First of all, pay attention to one of the examples of the Alexandrian verse par excellence. It's about a verse of the poet Rubén Darío which uses this Alexandrian structure:

The princess is sad... what will the princess have?

If we divide this verse into syllables we can verify the following:

The-prin-ce-saes-tá-te-te-te-what-will-dá-la-prin-ce-sa?

We therefore see that the total number of syllables is 14. Now we are going to make a division into two hemistichs, since it is another of the characteristics of this type of verse:

La-prin-ce-saes-tá-tris-te (7 syllables)
que-ten-drá-la-prin-ce-sa (7 syllables)

Other examples of Alexandrian verses

As you can see, these types of verses are very easy to recognize. Now we are going to show you another series of poems that have this type of metric structure in their composition:

As in pink girl there is a lot of color

e in gold very little great price and great value,

as in little blasm yaze grand good smell,

ansí in owner girl yaze very great taste.

As a little robin he has a lot of bondat,

color, virtue and price and noble clarity,

there, little owner has a lot of beldat

beauty, grace, love and loyalty.

Girl is the calender and boy is the nightingale,

but they sing more sweetly than another larger bird;

the woman who is a girl that's why she is better:

in doñeo it is sweeter than açúcar nin flor.

It is one of the first examples that we can find and its author is the Archpriest of Hita. As you can see, it is written in the Romance language. For its part, we are going to see another example corresponding to Gonzalo de Berceo:

Never in a century have I been able to achieve so delightful,

no shade so warm [no] smell so tasty;

I unloaded my ropiella for the most vicious yazer,

pose me in the shade of a beautiful tree

We hope that these poems have helped you to know what the Alexandrian verses are, their origin and their examples.