Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records.
Strophe ' onMouseout='HidePop("42236")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Greek_language">Greek
Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
στροφή,
turn, bend, twist, see also
phraseIn grammar, a phrase is a group of words functioning as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence.For example, the house at the end of the street is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It can further be broken down into two shorter phrases functioning as adjectives: at the end and of the street, a...
) is a concept in
versificationPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
which properly means a turn, as from one
footIn verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem. Both the quantitative meter of classical poetry and the accentual-syllabic meter of most poetry in English use the foot as the fundamental building block. A foot consists of a certain...
to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other.
A strophe also forms the first part of the
odeOde is a lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode...
, followed by the
antistropheAntistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west.It has the nature of a reply and balances the effect of the strophe...
and
epodeEpode, in verse, is the third part of an ode, which followed the strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement.At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previously chanted to right of the altar or stage, and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or permitted the...
. In its original Greek setting, "strophe, antistrophe and epode were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music," as
John MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
wrote in the preface to Samson Agonistes, with the strophe chanted by a
Greek chorusThe Greek chorus is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragic and twenty-four in comic plays of classical Athens. They could be portraying any characters - for instance, in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the chorus comprises the elderly men of Argos, whereas in Euripides' The Bacchae, they are a...
as it moved from right to left across the stage. In a more general sense, the strophe is a pair of stanzas of alternating form on which the structure of a given poem is based, with the strophe usually being identical with the
stanzaIn poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
in modern poetry and its arrangement and recurrence of rhymes giving it its character. But the Greeks called a combination of verse-periods a system, giving the name "strophe" to such a system only when it was repeated once or more in unmodified form.
It is said that Archilochus first created the strophe by binding together systems of two or three lines. But it was the
GreekGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
ode-writers who introduced the practice of strophe-writing on a large scale, and the art was attributed to
StesichorusStesichorus was a Greek lyric poet from Himera in Sicily, one of the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of study....
, although it is probable that earlier poets were acquainted with it. The arrangement of an
odeOde is a lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode...
in a splendid and consistent artifice of strophe,
antistropheAntistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west.It has the nature of a reply and balances the effect of the strophe...
and
epodeEpode, in verse, is the third part of an ode, which followed the strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement.At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previously chanted to right of the altar or stage, and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or permitted the...
was carried to its height by
PindarPindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved...
.
With the development of Greek
prosodyIn poetry, the meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order. Prosody is a more general linguistic term, that includes poetical meter but also the rhythmic aspects of...
, various peculiar strophe-forms came into general acceptance, and were made celebrated by the frequency with which leading poets employed them. Among these were the Sapphic, the Elegiac, the Alcaic and the Asclepiadean strophe, all of them prominent in Greek and Latin verse. The briefest and the most ancient strophe is the dactylic distich, which consists of two verses of the same class of rhythm, the second producing a melodic counterpart to the first.
The forms in modern English verse which reproduce most exactly the impression aimed at by the ancient odestrophe are the elaborate rhymed stanzas of such poems as
KeatsJohn Keats was an English poet, who became one of the key figures of the Romantic movement. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats was one of the second generation Romantic poets...
'
Ode to a Nightingale or
Matthew ArnoldMatthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
's
The Scholar-Gipsy.
A strophic form of poetry called
MuwashshahMuwashshah or muwaššah is an Arabic poetic form, as well as a secular musical genre in the eastern part of the Arab world using muwaššah texts as lyrics. The poetic form is also used in Andalusi nubah which similarly originates in Al-Andalus...
developed in Andalucia as early as the 9th century C.E, which then spread to North Africa and the Middle East. Muwashshah was typically in classical Arabic, with the refrain sometimes in the local dialect.
Types
Two verses
Pareado: aa / AA.
Alegría (Hapiness):
Cosante:
Dístico elegiaco:
Three Verses
Terceto: 11A 11B 11A
Tercetillo:
Soleá: a-a
Four Verses
Cuarteto: 11A 11B 11B 11A
Redondilla: 8a 8b 8b 8a
Serventesio: 11A 11B 11A 11B
Cuarteta: 8a 8b 8a 8b
Copla: - a - a
Seguidilla: 7a 5b 7a 5b ó 7- 5a 7- 5a
Cuaderna vía: 14A 14A 14A 14A
Five Verses
Quintilla:
Double Quintilla
Quintilla endecasílaba
Quintilla of Fray Luis de León
Royal Quintilla
Quinteto:
Quinteto de arte mayor
Quinteto contracto
Quinteto agudo
Lira: 7a 11B 7a 7b 11B
Six Verses
Sexteto o sextina: Versos
Sextilla:
Copla de pie quebrado or copla manriqueña: 8a 8b 4c 8a 8b 4c
Seven Verses
Compound Seguidilla: 7- 5a 7- 5a 5b 7- 5b
Eight Verses
Royal Octava: ABABABCC
Copla de arte mayor: ABBAACCA
Octavilla: 4- 4a 4a 4b 4- 4c 4c 4b
Ten Verses
Décima o espinela: abbaaccddc
Seguidilla chamberga: 7- 5a 7- 5a 3b 7b 3c 7c 3d 7d