Mocedades de Rodrigo - Meter

Meter

The cantar is composed of approximately 30 series of monorhyming heterosyllabic verses which predominate in absolute mode the assonance in รก-o, which appear in fifteen series, that is, a total of 972 verses.

The number of verses per series oscillates between the 264 of the number XVII and the two verses from various others (II, V, V, etc.). It is possible that many of these cases are regarding remains of incomplete series, because the text contains many holes.

As in many Spanish cantares de gesta, there is no fixed number of syllables for each verse, even though there exists a tendency for these to measure between 14 and 16 metric syllables with a pronounced caesura, that divides the verse in two hemistiches, of which the first tends to be octosyllabic. This feature could indicate its proximity to the meter of the Spanish romances, so the scribe copies the two hemistiches from the same epic verse in each separate line.

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