French verse does not count stresses. It counts syllables — and since the number of syllables in a French line depends on whether you pronounce the unstable e, the whole system rests on the e caduc you studied in lesson 8. That connection is why this lesson sits here rather than being decoration: French metrics is applied phonology.
Twelve syllables, a break after the sixth, and a rhyme scheme. Once you can count a line, French poetry from Ronsard to Césaire opens up — and reading it aloud correctly stops being guesswork.
Rule 1 — a final e counts as a syllable before a consonant, and is silent before a vowel or at the end of the line.
Un1 e2-tran3-ge4 bai5-ser6 — the e of étrange counts, because baiser begins with a consonant.
Take Baudelaire's line and count it:
La na-ture est un tem-ple où de vi-vants pi-liers
La(1) na(2) tu(3) r’est(4) un(5) tem(6) — pl’où(7) de(8) vi(9) vants(10) pi(11) liers(12)
Twelve. An alexandrine. Notice that the e of nature elides into est, and the e of temple into où — both before vowels, both silent.
Rule 2 — diérèse and synérèse. A vowel sequence like -ion or -ien may count as one syllable or two, and the poet chooses whichever makes the count work.
| French | Pronunciation | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| une diérèse | ün dyay-REZ | splits into two: pas-si-on (3 syllables) |
| une synérèse | ün see-nay-REZ | keeps as one: pas-sion (2 syllables) |
| un hiatus | uhn ee-ah-TÜS | two vowels meeting across words, classically avoided |
| une élision | ün ay-lee-ZYOHN | the silent e before a vowel |
| French | Pronunciation | Syllables and use |
|---|---|---|
| l’alexandrin | lah-lex-ahn-DRAN | 12 — the noble line: tragedy, epic, the sonnet |
| le décasyllabe | luh day-kah-see-LAHB | 10 — medieval epic, then the lyric |
| l’octosyllabe | lok-to-see-LAHB | 8 — song, ballad, lighter registers |
| l’heptasyllabe | lep-tah-see-LAHB | 7 — odd-numbered, deliberately unsettled (Verlaine) |
| le vers libre | luh vair LEEBR | no fixed count — from the late 19th century on |
| le vers blanc | luh vair BLAHN | metrical but unrhymed |
The classical alexandrine breaks after the sixth syllable into two hémistiches. The break is a syntactic pause, not just a count:
Je fais souvent ce rêve // étrange et pénétrant (6 // 6)
The Romantics broke the rule deliberately, and knowing that makes the effect visible. Victor Hugo's famous boast was j’ai disloqué ce grand niais d’alexandrin — he shifted the caesura, producing the trimètre romantique in three groups of four:
J’ai disloqué // ce grand niais // d’alexandrin (4 // 4 // 4)
| French | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| un enjambement | uhn ahn-zhahnb-MAHN | the sense runs on past the line break |
| un rejet | uhn ruh-ZHAY | a short spillover at the start of the next line |
| un contre-rejet | uhn kohntr-ruh-ZHAY | a short anticipation at the end of the previous line |
| un trimètre | uhn tree-METR | an alexandrine in three groups of four |
An enjambement with a short rejet throws weight onto the spilt word, because the line break forces a micro-pause before it. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth hearing: read the line aloud, pause at the break, and feel where the stress lands.
French classifies rhyme twice: by richness (how many sounds are shared) and by arrangement.
| French | Pronunciation | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| une rime pauvre | ün reem POHVR | 1 shared sound — ami / joli |
| une rime suffisante | ün reem sü-fee-ZAHNT | 2 shared sounds — ami / parti |
| une rime riche | ün reem REESH | 3 or more — image / hommage |
| des rimes plates | day reem PLAHT | AABB — couplets |
| des rimes croisées | day reem krwah-ZAY | ABAB — alternating |
| des rimes embrassées | day reem ahn-brah-SAY | ABBA — enclosed |
| une rime féminine | ün reem fay-mee-NEEN | ending in a silent e |
| une rime masculine | ün reem mahs-kü-LEEN | not ending in a silent e |
Classical verse alternates feminine and masculine rhymes, and this is worth knowing because it explains spellings that otherwise look arbitrary in old editions — poets chose word forms to make the alternation work.
| Form | Shape |
|---|---|
| le sonnet | two quatrains + two tercets, usually alexandrines; the turn comes at the ninth line |
| la ballade | three stanzas with a refrain plus an envoi |
| le rondeau | a short fixed form built on a returning opening line |
| le poème en prose | prose with poetic organisation — Baudelaire, Rimbaud |
| le calligramme | the text laid out as a picture — Apollinaire |
The sonnet's volta — the turn at the start of the tercets — is the single most useful thing to look for when reading one. The quatrains set up a situation; the tercets change its meaning. If you can locate the turn, you have understood the poem's architecture even if some vocabulary escapes you.
| French | Pronunciation | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| une allitération | ün ah-lee-tay-rah-SYOHN | repeated consonants |
| une assonance | ün ah-so-NAHNS | repeated vowels |
| une harmonie imitative | ün ar-mo-nee ee-mee-tah-TEEV | sound imitating sense |
| une anaphore | ün ah-nah-FOR | repeated opening (lesson 19) |
| une paronomase | ün pah-ro-no-MAHZ | near-identical words juxtaposed |
Racine's line Pour qui sont ces serpents qui sifflent sur vos têtes ? is the school example of alliteration — six sibilants hissing. It is also an alexandrine: count it.
| Poet | Why start there |
|---|---|
| Jacques Prévert | plain vocabulary, free verse, immediately enjoyable |
| Paul Verlaine | musical, short, deliberately odd-numbered lines |
| Charles Baudelaire | the classical alexandrine at its peak, with modern subject matter |
| Arthur Rimbaud | the form breaking apart in real time |
| Guillaume Apollinaire | the transition to modernity; punctuation abandoned |
| Aimé Césaire | Cahier d’un retour au pays natal — the great francophone long poem |
| Gaston Miron | Québec's central poetic voice |
| Léopold Sédar Senghor | négritude, and a poet who theorised French rhythm himself |
Take the first quatrain of Baudelaire's Correspondances and mark it up completely: syllable count per line, caesura, rhyme scheme and richness, any diérèse. It will take twenty minutes and you will never read French verse the same way again. Then read it aloud, pronouncing every e the count requires — that is how the line was meant to sound.
Versification is taught technically in French schools and examined at the baccalauréat: candidates are expected to scan a line and name its figures. The alexandrine remains culturally alive — in rap, in advertising slogans, in headlines — and French listeners hear it without being told. Slam and rap are now the main venue for metrical virtuosity, and artists such as Grand Corps Malade are read as part of the tradition rather than against it.
Québécois poetry made a deliberate break with French metrics in the 1950s and 60s: Gaston Miron, Anne Hébert and the Hexagone generation worked in free verse and in a recognisably Québécois idiom, treating the classical alexandrine as a borrowed costume. The chanson tradition — Vigneault, Leclerc, Leloup — carries much of Québec's verse culture, and counting the e caduc matters there too, because Québécois pronunciation drops it differently from Parisian.
Count the line as classical verse would.
Write oui or non.
1. French verse metre is based on:
2. Why does the e caduc matter so much in poetry?
3. Hugo's trimètre romantique is: