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STROPHE (Gr. o-rpod>)

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 1042 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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STROPHE (Gr. o-rpod>) , from orpE4ecv, to turn), a See also:term in' versification which properly means a turn, as from one See also:foot to another, or from one See also:side of a See also:chorus to the other. In its precise choral significance a strophe was a definite See also:section in the structure of an See also:ode, when, as in See also:Milton's famous phrase in the See also:preface to See also:Samson Agonistes, " strophe, See also:antistrophe and See also:epode were a See also:kind of stanzas framed only for the See also:music." In a more See also:general sense the strophe is a collection of various prosodical periods combined into a structural unit. In See also:modern See also:poetry the strophe usually becomes identical with the See also:stanza, and it is the arrangement and the recurrence of the rhymes which give it its See also:character. But the ancients called a See also:combination of See also:verse-periods a See also:system, and gave the name strophe to such a system only when it was repeated once or more in unmodified See also:form. It is said that See also:Archilochus first created the strophe by binding together systems of two or three lines. But it was the See also:Greek ode-writers who introduced the practice of strophe-See also:writing on a large See also:scale, and the See also:art was attributed to See also:Stesichorus, although it is probable that earlier poets were acquainted with it. The arrangement of an ode in a splendid and consistent artifice of strophe, See also:anti-strophe and epode was carried to its height by See also:Pindar (see ODE). With the development of Greek See also:prosody, various See also:peculiar strophe-forms came into general See also:acceptance, and were made celebrated by the frequency with which leading poets employed them. Among these were the Sapphic, the Elegiac, the Alcaic and the Asclepiadean strophe, all of them prominent in Greek and Latin verse. The briefest and the most See also:ancient strophe is the dactylic distich, which consists of two verses of the same class of See also:rhythm, the second producing a melodic counterpart to the first. The forms in modern See also:English verse which reproduce most exactly the impression aimed at by the ancient ode-strophe are the elaborate rhymed stanzas of such poems as the " See also:Nightingale " of See also:Keats or the " See also:Scholar-Gypsy " of See also:Matthew See also:Arnold (see VERSE).

End of Article: STROPHE (Gr. o-rpod>)

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