Stanza | Literary Term | English Literature | Major English | Plus Two Level
In
poetry, a stanza is a dividing and organizing technique which places a group of
lines in a poem together, separated from other groups of lines by line spacing
or indentation. Stanzas are to poetry what paragraphs are to prose.
Stanzas can be rhymed or unrhymed and fixed or unfixed in meter or
syllable count. The purpose of stanzas, whether in longer works or short poems,
is to break the images and information into shorter pieces. Stanzas are also
important in formal poems in which there is a strict meter and rhyme
scheme. The number of lines varies in different kinds of stanzas, but it
is uncommon for a stanza to have more than twelve lines. The pattern of a
stanza is determined by the number of feet in each line, and by
its metrical or rhyming scheme. Some examples of stanzas in
English: Couplet: A stanza of 2 lines, usually rhyming, Tercet: a unit or
stanza of three verse lines, Quatrain: a unit or stanza of four verse lines,
Quintain: a stanza of five verse lines, Sestet: a unit or stanza of six verse
lines, Septet or heptastich: a stanza of seven lines, Octave: a unit or stanza
of eight verse lines, Decastich: a stanza or poem of ten lines
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