Timeline for Why did iambic pentameter become so 'standard' in classical English poetry?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 28, 2021 at 16:53 | vote | accept | Rand al'Thor♦ | ||
| S Nov 27, 2020 at 10:17 | history | bounty ended | Gareth Rees | ||
| S Nov 27, 2020 at 10:17 | history | notice removed | Gareth Rees | ||
| S Nov 26, 2020 at 9:54 | history | bounty started | Gareth Rees | ||
| S Nov 26, 2020 at 9:54 | history | notice added | Gareth Rees | Reward existing answer | |
| Nov 24, 2020 at 13:24 | answer | added | verbose | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 11, 2020 at 0:50 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Iambic pentameter was undoubtedly the most common meter in English poetry until it was overtaken by free verse sometime in the early 20th century. | |
| May 26, 2020 at 22:34 | comment | added | Rand al'Thor♦ | @Tsundoku I confess I'm not knowledgeable enough to say exactly, but I'd hope a good answer might also help to frame the question more clearly than my vague knowledge can. | |
| May 26, 2020 at 21:43 | comment | added | Tsundoku | What period are you looking at? When did "classical English poetry" end? | |
| Mar 5, 2019 at 18:07 | comment | added | Peter Shor | There are a number of papers analyzing how close pre-Chaucerian poets were to iambic tetrameter and pentameter, and these papers generally find they were a lot less close than Chaucer. Since Middle English was losing the pronunciation of its final e's at the time, and the stresses on many words were different, scansion of poetry from this period is not an easy undertaking. At some point, I should write an answer. | |
| Mar 5, 2019 at 18:03 | comment | added | Peter Shor | I did a little more research, but not enough to write a complete answer. Before Chaucer and Gower, nobody followed iambic meter that closely ... my guess is that they were basing their meter on French octosyllables and decasyllables, where the constraints on internal stresses are much looser. Chaucer and Gower wrote the first real iambic meter – pentameter for Chaucer's masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, and tetrameter for Gower's masterpiece, Confessio Amantis. And many poets in the next century copied their innovations, particularly Chaucer's. | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 20:42 | comment | added | Peter Shor | From a brief googling, it looks to me like Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower introduced iambic meters in English (iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter being adaptions to English of the French decasyllable and octasyllable). And they were greatly admired poets whom other poets copied. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 15:47 | history | edited | Rand al'Thor♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited title
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| Dec 30, 2018 at 12:58 | comment | added | b a | It goes back at least to Chaucer. Wikipedia claims it was Chaucer who evolved decasyllable meter to iambic pentameter. Maybe it would be worth reading Chaucer and his contemporaries to search for when it became popular | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 6:26 | history | asked | Rand al'Thor♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |