LITERARY TRANSLATION

The most demanding type of translation: Technical (information content) vs literary

(style, essence).
Translation is a creative act, that is, a re-writing that tries to recreate the same
emotional effect.
Theory of skopos - The function of the product (intention) will shape the translation.
Todos los términos que se queden en el idioma original (nombres, etc.) van en
cursiva.
Coherencia: Si adaptas el lenguaje a la modernidad, los detalles como las monedas
también, aunque manteniendo el contexto cultural (pasar de chelines a libras).

PRE-TRANSLATION ANALYSIS

- Author
- Genre
- Intention - might be related to the genre.
- Register, tone, and authorial voice.
- Style - related to the author.
- Language
- Target public
- Translation strategy

1. REGISTER
➔ Is a socially defined variety of a language.

Categories
❖ Technical (computing texts, medicine texts…) / Non-technical
❖ Formal (posh, etc) / Informal (with contractions and slangs)
❖ Urban (from cities) / Rural
❖ Standard (common language) / Regional (with dialects marked like Scottish words...)
❖ Jargon (between people that know each other and know what they are talking about,
like some themes, tricks, etc.) / Non-jargon
❖ Vulgarity / Propriety

➔ Words are related to class, status and education.

- Naught have I → ARCHAIC
- Nothing have I → STATELY POETIC → Change of order of words.
- I have nothing → ‘STANDARD’ OR FORMAL → More usual in writing.
- I don't have anything → ‘SUBSTANDARD’ OR COLLOQUIAL → More usual in
speech because of the use of contractions.
- I don’t have nothing → ‘SUBSTANDARD’ → Almost always spoken because of the
use of contractions.
- I ain't have nothing → ‘SUBSTANDARD’ → Spoken british, appears in songs
sometimes.
- I don’t got nothing → ‘SUBSTANDARD’ → Utter dialect.

➔ Register membership is defined in terms of a number of parameters which constrain

the communication transaction. These include field (or subject matter), tenor (or
level of formality) and mode (or the distinction between spoken and written). It is by
recognition of such factors that registers are defined.
- Hatim and Mason, 1997.

2. STYLE
➔ Literary style is a unique way of presenting a piece of writing. The combination of
word choice, figurative language, sentence formation, and formality work to
create a ‘voice’ through which a story is told.
- Authorial / narrative voice → Determine the literary style of the author (how
she/he narrates, whether she uses dialogue and which literary figures use…)

➔ Example:
- She picked a red rose from the ground → Colloquial, daily life.
- Scarlet was the rose that she plucked from the earth → Poetic
- From the ground she delicately plucked the ruby rose, cradling it in her hands as if it
were a priceless jewel. →Poetic but narrative.

➔ There are key parts that make up a work of literature’s style:

❖ Diction: The style of the author’s word choice
❖ Sentence structure: The way words are arranged in a sentence
❖ Tone: The feeling or attitude a work creates; the overall feeling a word
sentence conveys. It can include irony, humor, sincerity…
❖ Narrator: The person telling the story and the point-of-view. It is told in
grammar and punctuation.
❖ Creative devices like symbolism, allegory, metaphor, rhyme, etc.
 CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS

★ Domestication → Adapt to the target culture.

★ Foreignization → Remain as the culture of the original text.

You can see it..

- Folklore (tradiciones)
- Nombres y formas de cortesía (Sir, Mr., Miss)
- Gastronomía
- Topónimo
- Refranes and sayings

Differences between cultures may cause severe problems when translating,

because the language is an expression of culture and its speakers, and problems
might arise when there is a lack or equivalence between the two languages and
cultures.
‘Untranslatability’→ Text with terms which are so culture-bound and
culture-specific as to make translation almost impossible.
USO DE LA CURSIVA
1. Títulos de libros, revistas,cómics y periódicos.
2. Programas de televisión (y sus episodios), películas y radio.
3. Esculturas, cuadros, piezas musicales, discos, canciones, espectáculos,
4. Voces y locuciones extranjeras:
- Cuando estas voces están naturalizadas, se escriben en redonda: puzzle
pasa a ser <puzle>.
- Los latinismos (se rigen por la misma norma): grosso modo y los nombres
científicos en latin siempre se escriben en cursiva: homo sapiens.
- Se excluyen los nombres propios de personas, topónimos, instituciones, vías
urbanas, edificios y marcas comerciales en lengua extranjera: Westminster,
Harrods, The British Museum, etc.
5. Neologismos: <Me lo pasé genial, lol>
6. Para enfatizar (aunque se pueden usar también comillas): <Sí, claro, está todo muy
limpio>; amoral es diferente que inmoral; cuando digo meteorología no me refiero al
tiempo.
7. Apodos, alias y apelativos familiares.
8. Nombres de aviones, barcos y naves espaciales.

USO DE LAS COMILLAS

1. Cualquier parte interna de una obra o publicación o títulos de ponencias, discursos
etc.
2. En los títulos de libros contenidos en el título de una obra: El tiempo en ‘Cien años
de soledad'.
3. Para acotar las citas.
4. Para expresar ironía: Era un profesor muy ‘agradable’.
USO DE MAYÚSCULAS
OTROS
 THEORETICAL PART

1. Translation for performance: Basic ideas

➔ Page-oriented translation: Someone translates a play in order to include it

in a compilation of plays by an author, for instance, and have it read by an
audience.
➔ Performance-oriented translation: A company commissions a translator
the translation of, for example, Macbeth in order to have their actors
perform it in front of an audience. Usually this performance is not that
practiced because it requires that the translator has certain knowledge
about theater, stage, and the language employed…

2. History

❖ 1970s when one of the leading professors had a theatre background

before becoming an academic. Luis Astrana was the translator of one of
the most canonical translations of Shakespeare with Aguilar editorial. In
the late 1920s, from that time on become a canonical Shakespeare not
only in Spain but also in Latin America.
❖ In the 1960s Planeta commissioned a new translation by Jose Maria
Valverde, who carried out this translation when he was in Canada. His
approach when translating Shakespeare was the same as Astrana.
However, he took into account the way the text sounded. His decisions
mostly had to do with semantics and focused on lexics.
❖ Manuel Angel Conejero focused on Shakespeare too but did it with a
team involved. In the process of that he wrote a draft in which he had in
mind the performance dimension of the text, the oral dimension of the
text of his experience as an actor and he was the one who examined the
text and focused on the text nuances.
- The ultimate goal was that the text has to be adequate for the
actors to deliver on the stage. That teamwork also involved
rehearsing the text and trying to impersonate the different attitudes.

❖ “It’s quite cold in here, isn’t it? There is an opinion involved and also an
illocutionary force, try to get someone to get up and close the door or
turn on the heating. It has an effect on someone. Were not just doing an
illocutionary force, there is often a kind of mismatch between the syntax
and the illocutionary force.
EXERCISE
LEAR: Let the great gods LEAR: que los dioses
That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads que mantienen este terrible
tumulto sobre nuestras cabezas
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, encuentren a sus enemigos
ahora. Tiembla, tú desgraciado,
That hast within thee undivulgèd crimes que tienes dentro de ti delitos que no se
han conocido
Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand, que la justicia no ha
castigado/azotado. Escóndete, tu mano ensangrentada,
Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue tu perjura, y tú que simulas la virtud
That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake, que eres incestuoso. Miserable,
desintégrate en pedazos,
That under covert and convenient seeming que bajo apariencia oculta y
conveniente
Has practiced on man's life. Close pent-up guilts, has conspirado contra la vida de
un hombre. Culpa encerrada,
Rive your concealing continents and cry romped vuestros continentes de
ocultación y clamad
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man por la gracia de estos terribles
convocadores. Soy un hombre
More sinned against than sinning. contra el que se ha pecado más de lo que él ha
pecado

TIPS

Avoid word-by-word translation in these types of texts. Try to capture

the sense and then rephrase that sense in our own words.
This source text is written in verse. The space between the character
name and his/her first words means these complete a previous short
line by another character.
- This is an example of blank verse ( = unlimited sequence of
unrhymed iambic pentameters). It does not have a fixed
number of lines
■ Iambic pentameter: rhythmic pattern of two
syllables each time in which the second syllable is
more stressed than the first one
- “art”: second person singular of the present of the verb to be

What variety of Spanish are we going to use in order to translate

this?
 Concise, connotative, succinct, dense rhythmic, dynamic, tied-bound
and interconnective language
➢ These adjectives can be seen in orality (performal dimension of
language) and dialogue (language in specific situations,
conversations and interactions) → Pragmatics/discourse
analysis: considering language in relation to speech acts and
situations

Endeavour speeches
➢ Illocutionary = the act performed in saying “it’s quite cold in
here”. Depending on how the locutor says it, it can mean a
comment or a command, among others.
■ Perlocutionary effect = the hero gets up and closes the
window

TYPES OF ACTIVITY

★ Review = Comment on new translations, description and evaluation as to whether it is

worth it.
★ Criticism = Broader activity involving analysis in detail, describing and/or evaluating
both old and new translations.
★ Translation commentary = A kind of criticism of one's own translation, involving
the description of the purpose, principles, rules, method, strategies, etc. used, and how
translation problems have been solved.

Translation criticism

➔ Should not be a mere identification of errors, or subjectively judge translations as

'good', 'bad', 'faithful', etc. without qualifying these adjectives.

➔ Should take into account all the factors and elements in the process of translation:
Intention, Function, Cultural and social context, Text type, Register, Strategies,
Principles and rules, Constraints, Intended audience and Ideology of the translator.
 HOW TO DO A TRANSLATION CRITIC?

Step 1: Analysis of Target Text on its own, see how natural the translation is; could it be
perceived as an original work?

Step 2: Analysis of Source Text on its own as if you were going to translate it; identify
potential translation problems. Consider:

- Subject matter: What is the play about ?

- Attitudes (ideology) towards given areas of life: gender, religion, domestic
relationships. Pay special attention to 'loaded' words (e.g. 'grace', 'merit' in its
Protestant and Calvinistic sense) and aspects of language such as modality.
- Motivation, aim, purpose (book production, for performance…)
- Readership, audience
- Author : Is a prestigious dramatist? Are expectations created because of the
authorship ?
- Mode of publication: book, critical edition, does it have an introduction? Notes?
- Genre or text type: drama, subgenre: comedy, romantic comedy, satirical comedy…
- Chronolect (temporal variety of language): Early modern English grammar and
vocabulary
- Registers (varieties of language according to its use): [mode , field, tenor] :
frequency/density of register shifts. Are registers associated with other features such
as characterization?

(1) part of Field: culture-specific terms, semantic field, proper names

(2) part of Tenor: writer-readership relationship : modality

(3) part of Mode: cohesion (holds the text together, creating 'texture' and
contributing to the overall coherence of the argument), lexical chain of
synonyms; word order and thematic structure (theme - rheme)

- Dialects (varieties of language according to its users): are there characters that speak
in dialect? What function do geographical or social dialects perform in the play?
- Style: prose / verse (predominant form in early modern drama - blank verse). Non
blank verse forms: couplets (function in signaling the end of a set speech or of a
scene) , songs (lyrics adapted or unadapted to given melody) , shorter lines. Other
things: quality, metaphors and imagery, ambiguity, significant stylistic or rhetorical
devices, neologisms, wordplay.
- Humour
- Cultural elements: culturemes or culture-specific terms and concepts: identity (forms
of address, honorifics, social ranks), beliefs and values (religion), environment (food,
clothes, weapons, coins, flora and fauna), proper names and intertextual references.
Step 3: Analysis of the Target Text, see how the Target Text has solved the challenges. Also
include:

- On the translator: experience of translating, of translating Shakespeare, drama or

classics.
- Directness of translation: direct from the Source Language or indirect through another
language?
- Degree of fullness: integral or partial (mutilated, adaptation)? With identical or
different distribution of language material? With identical or different segmentation
(division into chapters, paragraphs, etc.)?
- General assessment as to accuracy to semantic content.
- Motivation, aim, purpose ( skopos ) : Is it made explicit by the translator or inferred
from close analysis of translation choices?
- Translation orientation: Toward the Source Culture or towards the Target Culture
(Schleiermacher)? Towards the pole of adequacy to the Source Culture or the pole of
acceptability in the Target Culture? Foreignizing or domesticating 'strategies' ?
- Translation method: [ = development of a translation process determined by a set of
principles depending on the translator 's purpose and affecting the TT on a
macro-textual level; it is literal? (translating word for word, phrase for phrase, the
morphology, syntax and meaning of the ST)
- Interpretative-communicative: re-expressing the meaning of the ST, fulfilling the
same purpose and producing the same effect on the addressee.
- Compare everything of step 2 to the TT text and see how it differs or is similar.
- Does it add lines or keeps the number of lines in a speech?
- Place of publication and date (comparison)
- Readers' knowledge of the subject.
- Communicative approach: the 'dynamic equivalence'= the manner in which
receptors of the translated text respond to it must be equivalent to the manner in
which the receptors of the source text respond to the source text
- Was it in fact worth translating? What kind of influence will it have on the language,
literature, the ideas in its new melieu?

TYPES OF TEXTS

● informative texts -> it conveys the facts acceptably

● vocative text -> it has its purposed effect
● expressive text -> judges, judged 'adequate' if explains what the text is about.
 DUBBING AND SUBTITLING

DUBBING = the replacement of the dialogues in the original track of an audiovisual text
with "another track on which translated dialogues have been recorded in the target language".

Three types of synchronization:

● Isochrony: Following the timing of each character's speech every sentence, phrase,
pause has to coincide with the timing needed by an actor to utter them.
● Kinesic synchrony: Following the gestures; the meaning of gestures has to be in
consonance with the translation.
● Lip synchrony: it is only an issue in close-up shots, where the speaker's face and lip
movements are fully visible, and only in labials, and semi-labials where the mouth has
to be closed.

Dubbing symbols in Spain

Symbols inserted in the dubbing script or final translation, indicating where the voice comes
from and some paralinguistic signs:

● (ON) on screen, in field voice (not inserted by default; only to indicate a change
from
● (OFF) voice off, voice out of camera range
● (SB) si boca, the character is on screen but his/her mouth cannot be seen
● (DE) de espaldas, the character has his/her back to the camera
● (DL) de lejosthe character is far away from the camera
● (DC) de costado, de lado,
● (G) gesto sonoro, paralinguistic sign
● (P) (T) (X) pisar / xafar, when one character interrupts his/her previous interlocutor

SUBTITLING

Technical aspects:

Relationship between oral Source Text (temporal) and written Target Text (spatial): time measured in
seconds and frames (24 frames per second); space measured by typographical characters (including
blank spaces)

On the basis that it takes six seconds to read two full subtitle lines, that is, 72 characters (36 characters
each full line):
-> 1 second = 12 characters
-> 2 frames = 1 character.
 TRANSLATION IN VERSE

Views →There are different views concerning what poetry translation is. However, there is
no approach that is 100% right, but it rather depends on the author you ask.

Frameworks

Holmes, James. “Forms of Verse Translation and the Translation of Verse Forms”
(1970)

Holmes bases his notion of translation on Barthes’ concept of ‘meta-language’, a class of

writing which ‘deals not with the world but with the linguistic formulations made by
other; it is a comment on a comment’. He expands this concept onto those forms of
secondary language or meta-language which include not only criticism on a literary work, as
Barthes does, but also a critical essay in another language, a prose translation (perhaps
including the comment, paraphrase or gloss in the target language before this meta-literary
form), a verse translation or metapoem, an imitation (in Dryden’s sense of the term), a poem
“about” a poem or a poem inspired by a poem.

VERSE APPROACHES

He arranges this forms of meta-literature along a fan with the source poem in the
centre:

● Critical essay in another language is indeterminate in length and subject matter: the
writer brings in whatever material he thinks relevant,interpretative: the writer also
“translates” the poem into another linguistic system as well as providing a critical
interpretation of it.
● Prose translation: this is determinate in length and subject matter, and also
interpretive can be verbatim (interlinear, literal, word-for-word), rank-bound, unbound
‘literary’ translation.
● Verse translation: is interpretive, indeterminate in length and subject matter, uses
verse as its medium, thus aspiring to be a poem in itself.
● Imitation, poem ‘about’ a poem, and poem inspired by a poem: are indeterminate in
length and subject matter, and do not have interpretation as one of their major
purposes.
➔ Holmes proposes the use of the term “metapoem” which has a double purpose: it is
both meta-literature on the source literary text and primary literature in the
target tradition.
 ➔ The problem of choosing the appropriate verse form in which to cast the metapoem is
taken at an early stage in the entire process of translation, and it will determine the
nature and sequence of the decisions still to come.

METAPOETIC FORMS

‘Form-derivative’ forms: Seek some kind of equivalence in the target language for the
outward form of the original poem. In other words, the poet chooses a form into which he
then pours what he has to say (ideas, thoughts, images, music).

1. Mimetic form: Reproduce the original form (structure) to keep it. Fundamental
similarity (or ‘identity’) as the starting point. Example → Iliad in English in
hexameters (Richmond Lattimore).
➔ Pseudo-mimetic forms: Reproduce the identity of the poem, but not to
reproduce either its particular form or function. Example → French
alexandrines into English alexandrines, but they are not in fact equivalent
neither in form nor in function; instead, the translator looks at the name of the
form rather than at the form itself.
2. Analogical form: Understand the function (of the form) within its poetic tradition,
and then seek a form that fills a parallel function within the target poetic tradition. In
other words, bring the original poem within the native tradition, to ‘naturalise’ it.
Function as the starting point. Example → Epic -> in English: blank verse or heroic
couplet. Function as the starting point.

Monistic approach: Form and content are inseparable, it is impossible to find any
predetermined extrinsic form into which the poem can be poured in translation, and the only
solution is to allow a new intrinsic form to develop from the inward workings of the text
itself.

3. Organic form: Convey (reproduce) the semantic content and organically allows it to
take its own unique poetic shape as the translation develops. Meaning as the starting
point.

Older collateral of the organic form: A kind of minimum conformation on the part of the
metapoet to the formal requirements of his poetic culture, which at the same time leaves him
the freedom to transfer the ‘meaning’ of the poem with greater flexibility and gives
place to creative interpretation and adaptation of the original work. Might be for
different reasons such as create a new poetic effect, highlight certain aspects or bring out
different nuances.

4. Extraneous or deviant form: Cast the metapoem into a form that is not equivalent in
either the form or the content of the original; the translator intentionally chooses a
form that is different or unrelated to the original one to convey the essence or
meaning in a way that might be more suitable or expressive in the target language or
cultural context. Example → ABC rhyme translated into AB rhyme.
Mimetic form (1)

FP: Verse form of the original poem

FMP: Verse form of the metapoem

Analogical form (2)

PTSL: Poetic tradition of the Source

Language

PTTL: Poetic tradition of the Target

Language

Form-derivative forms (1-2)

CP: The content, the

non-formal material of the
original poem.

CMP: The content of the

metapoem.

TR: The translingual process

Content-derivative form (3)

Extraneous form (4)

 PROSODY

★ PROSODY: Study of sound patterns and beats in poetry (stanzas, meter, rhymes and
verse patterns).

★ RHYTHM: Regularly patterned flow of sounds or movements.

- Written in verse (in meter) → When the rhythm has been regularized and
systematized.
- SPRUNG RHYTHM: Scanning by accents or stresses alone.

RHYTHM IN VERSE LINES

★ METRE: Arrangement of sound elements into strong and weak beats or accents.

- Kinds of meter in English:

● Stress or accentual verse → We count the stresses disregarding the number of
syllables per line; usually, lines have a fixed number of stresses and variable number
of syllables.
● Accentual-syllabic verse → We count stresses and syllables (the standard
versification in English poetry since the 14th century)
● Syllabic verse → Its pattern is based on syllable count (as in French prosody); the
number of syllables per line is fixed, while the number of stresses is variable.
● Free verse → Every line has its own length, its own meter and rhythm, and usually
has no rhyme.

★ Each unit is called a foot.

LINE LENGTHS
- Octosyllable
- Decasyllable
- Alexandrine: 12 syllables (a ‘hexameter’ in English accentual-syllabic verse; in
French prosody, a line of 12 syllables)
 KINDS OF FEET

● Iamb (iambic) : / - ´ / One unstressed followed by a stressed syllable: ‘alone’

● Trochee (trochaic): / ´ - / A stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable:
‘only’
● Spondee (spondaic): / ´ ´ / two stressed syllables
● Pyrrhus (pyrrhic): / - - / two unstressed syllables
● Anapest (anapestic) : / - - ´ / Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable:
‘intervene’
● Dactyl (dactylic): / ´ - - / one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables:
‘happily’

LINE LENGTHS
One foot -> monometer
Two feet -> diameter
Three feet -> trimeter
Four feet -> tetrameter
Five feet -> pentameter
Six feet -> hexameter (also alexandrine)
Seven feet -> heptameter

★ Line lengths combined with the dominant kind of feet constitute line metrical
patterns.

- Examples of line metrical patterns: My mother thinks us long away;

(scanned as “My mó/ther thínks/ us lóng/ awáy/” -> iambic tetrameter)
Tis time the field were mown. .... ( -> iambic trimeter)
 DEVICES

CAESURA: Internal pause marking the end of a sense unit - NOT a metrical unit.
Example: A thing of beauty | is a joy forever: (John Keats).
Note that the caesura may occur in the middle of a foot: “Its lóve/linéss/ incréa/ses | Ít / will
néver” (J. Keats)

ENJAMBMENT: When the sense unit does not coincide with the end of the verse line.
When it does, lines are called end-stopped lines.
Examples in lines 2 onwards showing different degrees of enjambment:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower of quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing ...

SCANSION: To measure its rhythm in order to analyze its meter by marking the rhythmical
or metrical units in the line.

HOW TO ANALYZE A POEM?

1. Perceive the dominant rhythm (iambic, trochaic, spondaic, etc.)

2. Mark the natural accents in each line, and count the number of syllables.
3. Try to mark the foot divisions of the line metrical pattern.
- TIP: Key words are usually accented, unimportant words receive less accent.
- Not all accents in a line have equal force, but what matters is the contrast between less
accented syllables and more stressed syllables.

4. Observe the caesura or internal pause marking the end of a sense unit, and
enjambment(s).
5. Examine and explain the effect of regularities and irregularities, both those changes
that are accepted or expected, and those that are not.
 VARIATIONS OR LICENSES

In the pronunciation of words and phrases…

ELISION: Words pronounced with one syllable less: ‘heaven’; diphthongs may count as one
vowel like oil.

Inversion of first feet…

First line: Sée hére’s / the wórk/box, lít/tle wífe /
Third line: Hé was / a jóin/er of víl/lage lífe

Lines with less syllables…

DEFECTIVE FEET: Has one unstressed syllable missing.

Long for me the rick will wait

And long will wait the fold,
And long will standthe empty plate
And dinner will be cold

- The first line has one syllable less because the first foot is ‘defective’ so the line is
scanned “ ^ Lóng/ for mé/ the ríck/ will wáit/”
- A defective foot can occur in mid line: Speech after long silence; it is right it is read
as Spéech af/ter lóng/ ^ sí/lence; ít/ is ríght /

Lines with extra syllables…

FEMININE ENDING: Final foot has an extra syllable at the end.

“It was níght / in the lóne/some Octóber “ (last foot is an anapest with an extra syllable: - - ´
- )

Extra syllable in the first foot…

I wish you strength to bring you pride,
And a love to keep you clean
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
At racing on the green
- The second line has seven syllables, and is scanned “ And a lóve / to kéep / you
cléan” : the first feet is an anapest.

Extra syllable…
Hé was / a jóin/er of víl/lage lífe (third foot is anapest)
Caesura
Defective feet, or feet with extra syllables may occur before the caesura.

RHYMES

★ RHYME: The repetition of two syllables at the end of a line with the same medial vowel(s)
and final consonant(s) and with different initial consonant(s).
★ INTERNAL RHYME: When one of the rhyming words is not at the end of the line; can
occur in two consecutive lines.

FORMS

Perfect rhyme = back - pack C V C

Near rhyme = repetitions of vowels or consonants at line end not conforming to the strict definition
of rhyme.

Consonant or assonant?
Assonance = back - rat C V C
Consonance = back- neck C V C

Others…
Perfect rhyme = back - pack C V C
Reverse rhyme = back - bat C V C
Rich rhyme = bat - bat C V C :
Eye rhyme (visual rhyme) = cough - plough

RHYME PATTERNS

● Enclosed rhyme: A B B A
● Alternate rhyme: A B A B
 STANZA FORMS

We can identify stanzas by looking at:

- Number of lines (2, 3, 4, etc)
- Rhyme pattern or scheme (a b b a)
- Tail rhyme
- Line length (trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter)
- Number of lines

★ TAIL RHYME: A verse form in which rhymed lines such as couplets or triplets are followed
by a tail – a line of different (usually shorter) length that does not rhyme with the couplet or
triplet. In a tail-rhyme stanza (also called a tail-rhymed stanza), the tails rhyme with each
other.

NUMBER OF LINES CHARACTERIZATION

COUPLET (2): A A
- Open couplet: The syntactic unit carries over into the first line of the next couplet and there is
no heavy pause at the end of its second line.
- Closed couplet: The syntactical unit comes to an end at the end of the second line, and there is
a heavy pause or a full stop.
- Heroic couplet: When lines are iambic pentameters.

TRIPLET (3): A A A
Terza rima : a b a, b c b, c d c

QUATRAIN (4)
- Ballad stanza: 4a 3b 4a 3b ; 4x 3a 4x 3a ; iambic rhythm (4 is for tetrameter, 3 for trimeter)
- Long ballad: a b a b ; x a x a ; a a b b ; all lines are iambic terameters
- Short ballad: 3x 3a 4x 3a; iambic rhythm
- Heroic quatrain: a b a b ; all lines are iambic pentameter, alternate rhyme
- Brace stanza: a b b a; all lines iambic pentameter, brace rhyme

CINQUAIN (5)
Limerick: 3a 3a 2b 2b 3a; anapestic rhythm (3 is for trimeter, 2 for dimeter)

SIXAIN (6)
- Stave of six: a b a b c c : iambic pentameter or tetrameter (quatrain + couplet)
- Sestina: six pentameter sixains that repeat, each in a different and predetermined pattern, the
end words of the lines of the first sixain.
- Tail-rhyme stanza: a a b c c b, with line b having different length
SEPTET (7)
Rhyme royal (Chaucerian stanza): a b a b b c c ; pentameters. Variants have hexameters.

OCTAVE (8)
- Common octave: a b a b c d c d ; x a x a x b x b; pentameter or tetrameter
- Brace octave: any octave in which brace rhyme (a b b a) is used
- Triolet: a b a a a b a b ; 1st, 4th and 7th lines are identical, as are lines 2 and 8
- Ottava rima: a b a b a b c c; iambic pentameter

SPENSERIAN STANZA (9): a b a b b c b c c

First eight lines are pentameters; the ninth line, a hexameter.

★ Stanzas of ten, eleven and twelve lines are rare and have no familiar name.

SONNET (14)
● Italian or Petrarchan sonnet: a b b a, a b b a, c d e, c d e ; a b b a, a b b a, c d c, d c d
- 14 lines: one octave + one sextet. Some have the sestet ending in a couplet.

● English, Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet: three heroic quatrains + couplet

- A common rhyme scheme is: a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g

● Spenserian sonnet: three interlocked quatrains and a couplet ; rhyme scheme : a b a b, b c b c,

c d c d, e e

● Blank verse: Unlimited succession of unrhymed iambic pentameters

● Free verse: No specific order.

VILLANELLE
Usually 19 lines in tercets and two rhymes; 1st line is repeated in line 6 and 12, and 3rd line is
repeated in line 9 and 15; both 1st and 3rd lines are repeated in the final 4 lines.

THE ODE
Poem of some length which does not follow any of the other conventional forms.
- Stanzaic odes: follow a fixed stanzaic pattern
- Horatian ode: a a b b; or unrhymed quatrain in which the first two lines are longer than the
third and fourth
- Pindaric ode: consists of three stanzas, ‘strophe’, ‘antistrophe’ and ‘epode’, being the first two
identical in pattern except for the rhyme sounds, and the third stanza is almost diferent from
the other two.
- Cowleian ode: Indeterminate in form