The Faerie Queene - Structure and Language

Structure and Language

The Faerie Queene was written in Spenserian stanza, which was created specifically for The Faerie Queene. In this style, there are nine iambic lines – the first eight of them five footed and the ninth a hexameter – which form “interlocking quatrains and a final couplet” (McCabe 203). The rhyme pattern is ABABBCBCC. Each book of The Faerie Queene contains a proem and twelve cantos. Each cantos has forty eight stanzas. This means that each book as a whole has over 18,000 lines (McCabe 203). Over 2000 stanzas were written for the 1590 Faerie Queene (McCabe 203).

Read more about this topic:  The Faerie Queene

Famous quotes containing the words structure and, structure and/or language:

    One theme links together these new proposals for family policy—the idea that the family is exceedingly durable. Changes in structure and function and individual roles are not to be confused with the collapse of the family. Families remain more important in the lives of children than other institutions. Family ties are stronger and more vital than many of us imagine in the perennial atmosphere of crisis surrounding the subject.
    Joseph Featherstone (20th century)

    When a house is tottering to its fall,
    The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,
    One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads,
    And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.
    Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

    This is an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)