Meter and Rhyme

Meter can be defined as “the recurrence of in poetry of a rhythmic pattern, or the rhythm established by the regular occurrence of similar units of sound” (Handbook of Literature, 323). Rhyme is defined as “Identity of terminal sound between accented syllables, usually occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse” (Handbook of Literature, 449). In short it is the musical quality in the play of words off of the tongue that makes a work of literature wonderful. Five examples in the literature that we have studied this semester are Lanval, The Canterbury tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Caedmon’s hymn, Layamon: From Brut.
In Lanval, Marie de France uses an ABA rhyme scheme to tell the story of Lanval’s adventures. This rhyme scheme gives the story a sing song quality to it, which makes it very easy to memorize and tell as an oral tale. An example is “Another lay to you I’ll tell, of the adventure that befall, a noble vassal whom they call In the Breton tongue Lanval”
In The Canterbury Tales the rhyme scheme and meter are a bit different than Lanval in that Chaucer writes in couplets, or two lines that end in the same rhyme, giving it the appearance of AA, BB, CC, and so on. An example of this is “Whan that April with his showres soote, The droughte of March hath perced to the roote.’ Soote and roote have the same rhyme ending causing the pattern to also fall into a start/stop jerky rhythm that is also easy to remember in order to recite.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the rhyme and meter are a bit different with the addition of the bob and wheel, used to summarize the free verse above. The “Bob” is the first inset of the summary and the wheel is the ABAB format that follows. This gives the reader and the listener an easy to remember potion of the story that captures the essence of what has come before, making following the tale easier.
In Caedmon’s Hymn the meter and the rhyme of the literature follows the Old English style of poetry that calls for a four accents to a line, with no fixed number of unstressed beats, and a caesura or break between the second and third accents. Also Caedmon’s hymn are example of the Old English style of alliteration (the first consonant is always the same), assonance (the same vowel sounds), and kennings, a metaphorical noun compound. An example of this is:
“Meotodes meahte and his modgepanc”
This line shows the break between the beats and the alliteration as nearly every word begins with the letter m. The kenning comes in “Meotodes meahte” which translated means “Measurer’s might” a reference to God or Christ who takes the measure of a man’s soul.
Finally in Layamon: From Brut the meter and rhyme the ABAB rhyme and sing song meter are again see in the section called “Arthur’s Dream. “Then came to pass what Merlin spoke of long before, That the walls of Rome would fall down before Arthur” Though this rhyme is a bit of a stretch as “before” and “Arthur” do not have the same spelling in the end they both roll of the tongue in the same manner. This quality again makes it very easy to memorize and speak aloud, giving it magical quality.