Correlative%20verse

Correlative verse

Correlative verse

Poetic device

Correlative verse is a literary device used in poetry around the world; it is characterized by the matching of items in two different pluralities. An example is found in an epigram from the Greek Anthology: "You [wine, are] boldness, youth, strength, wealth, country [first plurality] / to the shy, the old, the weak, the poor, the foreigner (second plurality]".[1] Another example is found in a couplet by 16th-century poet George Peele: "Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; / Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green".[2]

Characteristically notorious for correlative verse is Old Norse poetry, which proffers such cryptic examples as Þórðr Særeksson's:[3]

where the elemental pattern is ABCDABCD, i.e. "Varð sjálf sonar...Goðrún bani" (Became herself of her son Guðrún the slayer), etc.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Mignani, Rigo (1965). "Correlative verse". In Alex Preminger (ed.). Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Frank J. Warnke, O. B. Hardison, Jr. Princeton UP. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-691-01308-4.
  2. [2]
    Cuddon, J. A.; Preston, C. E. (1999). "Correlative verse". The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (4 ed.). London: Penguin. pp. 181–82. ISBN 9780140513639.
  3. [3]
    Faulkes, Anthony (1997). Poetical Inspiration in Old Norse and Old English Poetry. London. p. 29.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Further reading

  • Fucilla, Joseph G. (1956). "A Rhetorical Pattern in Renaissance and Baroque Poetry". Studies in the Renaissance. 3: 23–48. doi:10.2307/2857099. JSTOR 2857099.
Stub icon

This poetry-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Correlative%20verse, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.