Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been widely used in English poetry since the 16th century, especially for long works like plays, epics, and narrative poems. Some key uses include Shakespeare's plays, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Romantic poems like Wordsworth's Prelude. Blank verse allows for flexibility and natural syntax while maintaining a rhythmic structure. It became a dominant poetic form during the Renaissance and remained important until the rise of free verse in the 20th century.

1. Poetic forms & genres Blank Verse Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

2. Blank Verse The unrhymed five beat iambic line, otherwise known as iambic pentameter Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Wordsworth’s long poem ‘The Prelude’, are written in blank verse. Chaucer (c1342-1400) wrote in iambic pentameter BUT not blank verse. His poetry rhymed: Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

3. From The Canterbury Tales(Chaucer, late 14th C) Whan that aprill with his shouressoote The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swichlicour Of which vertuengendred is the flour; Whanzephirus eek with his sweetebreeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth Tendrecroppes, and the yongesonne Hath in the ram his halve coursyronne, And smalefowelesmakenmelodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (so priketh hem nature in hircorages); Thannelongen folk to goon on pilgrimages Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

4. History of Blank Verse Like the sonnet, blank verse came to English poetry from Italy: verse sciolati da rima (‘verse freed from rhyme’) 1540: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey translated ‘The Aenied’ into English using this ‘straunge meter’ In the Renaissance there was intense interest in finding an unrhymed line which would be as powerful as the Classical Greek or Latin epic Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

6. Continuity, enjambment, relatively natural word order. Verse Drama.

7. Also suited more unusual word order (‘syntactic inversion’). Epic poetry.

8. Milton: argued against ‘the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming’, rhyme is a ‘constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest them’Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

11. Variations – three other types of ‘foot’ Trochee /X (DUM di) laughter, never Anapest XX/ (di diDUM) Tennesee Dactyl (particularly the first two) /XX (DUM di di)suddenly Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

12. Variations – three common variations in the iambic pentameter line A reversed foot. Instead of an iamb, you have a trochee. Often at the beginning of the line: ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’. An extra unstressed syllable at the end: ‘Which, he once heard, was proper togrow wise in’ Replacing an iamb with a three syllable foot: ‘The fair Ophelia! Nymph in thy orisons’ Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

13. John Hollander says... Iambic five-beat lines are labelled blank Verse (with sometimes a foot or two reversed, Or one more syllable –“feminine ending”). Blank verse can be extremely flexible: It ticks and tocks the time with even feet (Or sometimes, cleverly, can end limping). Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

14. From Shakespeare’s Othello O, that the slave had forty thousand lives!One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.Now do I see 'tis true. Look here, Iago;All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven.'Tis gone.Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throneTo tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,For 'tis of aspics' tongues! Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

15. From King John: My lord? A grave. He shall not live. Enough. Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

17. Enjambment and ‘double syntax’can be used effectively in blank verse I formed them free, and free they must remain, Till they enthral themselves: I else must change Their nature, and revoke the high decree Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained Their freedom, they themselves ordained their fall. (PL, Bk 3) Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

22. rap tends to use a four-beat line which is associated with oral poetry and performance, whereas the five beat, pentameter line, has traditionally been associated with more text-based poetry. Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres