Medieval France. An Encyclopedia

VERSIFICATION

. The rhythm of poetry in medieval French is based on a fixed number of syllables in a
line. Longer lines are frequently divided by a pause, called a caesura, into parts called
hemistiches. Although examples exist of lines from one to fifteen syllables, the
commonest lines in medieval French poetry are of eight, ten, and twelve syllables. The
octosyllabic line, the oldest meter in French verse, appeared in the 10th century in the
Passion du Christ and in the 11th-century Vie de saint Léger and was the meter of the
epic poem Gormont et Isembart. The octosyllabic line, arranged in rhyming couplets
(rimes plates or suivies) became the meter of narrative poetry and drama in the 12th
century. The decasyllabic line was first used in the 11th-century Vie de saint Alexis and
was the meter of most of the older chansons de geste, such as the Chanson de Roland and
Chanson de Guillaume. It predominated in the poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries. The
dodecasyllabic line began to displace the decasyllabic in 13th-century epic (e.g., Voyage
de Charlemagne); used in the Roman d’Alexandre (ca. 1179), it became known as the
Alexandrine.
The first vernacular poems, beginning with the Sequence de sainte Eulalie (9th c.),
were assonanced. Assonance consists of the identity of sound of the final accented vowel
of successive verses; this identity need not extend to preceding or following sounds. The
chansons de geste were typically composed of laisses, groups of lines constructed on a
single assonance.
The first rhymed poem in the vernacular was the Occitan Chanson de sainte Foy (11th
c.). Other early rhymed poems were the Voyage de saint Brendan (ca. 1112) and the
Bestiaire of Philippe de Thaün (ca. 1125). Beginning with the 12th-century Romances of
Antiquity (Thèbes, Énéas, Troie), poems were regularly rhymed in French. By 1200,
assonance had given way to rhyme almost completely. Rhyme consists of the identity of
the final tonic vowel of two or more verses and any following articulations. If the words
end in a tonic vowel

aimé: chanté

favori: ami

then rhyme and assonance are identical, and the rhyme is called rime pauvre.
If the tonic vowel is followed by one or more consonants

mort: sort

passanz: granz

then the rhyme is both suffisante and pauvre.
When the identity of sound extends to articulations preceding the tonic vowel

vers: divers

main: demain

The Encyclopedia 1793