Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hendécasyllabe

French
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A verse of eleven syllables, common in Italian poetry and used occasionally in French verse. Less dominant than the alexandrin or décasyllabe, but present in experimental and Renaissance poetry.

Detailed Definition
The hendécasyllabe is the dominant meter of Italian poetry, the meter of Dante's Divine Comedy and Petrarch's Canzoniere, making it a meter of enormous prestige in the European tradition. In French poetry, it appears more rarely since it resists the French tendency toward even-numbered meters, but Renaissance poets influenced by Italian models occasionally employed it. Its eleven syllables, an odd number, give it a distinctive asymmetrical momentum. Some modern French poets have used it precisely for its resistance to the familiar rhythmic expectations created by the standard French meters, exploring its slightly unstable, forward-leaning quality.
Example
Example in poetry:
The hendécasyllabe's eleven syllables give Italian poetry its characteristic forward-leaning momentum, as in Dante's "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," where the odd syllable count creates an asymmetrical energy absent from French even-numbered meters; French poets who attempted hendécasyllables in the Renaissance did so partly as a demonstration of Italian literary influence, the meter signaling alignment with the prestige of Petrarchan humanism in competition with the native French décasyllabe; The hendécasyllabe's caesura typically falls after the fourth or sixth syllable, creating either a 4+7 or 6+5 distribution that gives the line its characteristic sense of imbalance resolved by arrival at the eleventh syllable; Verlaine's recommendation of impair meters in his Art poétique applies implicitly to the hendécasyllabe: its odd syllable count creates the quality of musical suggestion and rhythmic instability that he preferred to the confident regularity of the twelve-syllable alexandrin; A student comparing the hendécasyllabe with the French alexandrin should write the same semantic content in both meters and observe how the different syllable counts change the rhythm, pacing, and emotional quality of the verse; The hendécasyllabe's relative rarity in French poetry makes its occasional appearance a marked choice, signaling either Italian influence, metrical experimentation, or the poet's deliberate search for a rhythm outside the established hierarchy of native French meters.
Additional Notes
Hendécasyllabe is far more central in Italian than French poetry, making its appearance in French an interesting comparative phenomenon rather than a dominant norm. Students should use it to explore cross-cultural metrical borrowing and adaptation. Because French prosody differs fundamentally from stress-based traditions, imported forms often shift in effect. Compare with décasyllabe and alexandrin. This metre offers useful evidence of literary exchange and experimentation beyond strictly national traditions.
Also Known As
Eleven-syllable verse Hendecasyllabic verse
Skip to main content