Spenserian stanza

the stanza used by Spenser in his Faerie Queene and employed since by other poets, consisting of eight iambic pentameter lines and a final Alexandrine, with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbcc.

[1810-20]

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▪ poetic form

      verse form that consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet (an alexandrine); the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The first eight lines produce an effect of formal unity, while the hexameter completes the thought of the stanza. Invented by Edmund Spenser for his poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1609), the Spenserian stanza has origins in the Old French ballade (eight-line stanzas, rhyming ababbcbc), the Italian ottava rima (eight iambic pentameter lines with a rhyme scheme of abababcc), and the stanza form used by Chaucer in his “Monk's Tale” (eight lines rhyming ababbcbc). A revolutionary innovation in its day, the Spenserian stanza fell into general disuse during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was revived in the 19th century by the Romantic poets—e.g., Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Keats in “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and Shelley in “Adonais.”

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