( vers mêlés, vers ir-réguliers ). These terms describe the kind of verse used in minor or hybrid genres of the 17th and 18th cs. in France, in which lines of different lengths, though regular in internal construction, are irregularly and unpredictably combined. In other words, v. 1. c replace both isosyllabism with heterosyllabism, and also the single, repeated rhyme scheme of stanzaic verse with free-rhyming stichic or strophic structures—still subject, however, to the rule of the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. V. 1. c. became current in France from the 1640s and are to be associated particularly with préciosité and the baroque (qq.v.). They are to be found in burlesque poetry, the madrigal, the verse-epistle, the epigram, the idyll, the elegy (qq.v.), even in some religious verse (e.g. Corneille, Les Louanges de la sainte Vierge , 1665), and also in much narrative verse, esp. the fable (q.v.: La Fontaine; Florian). In the theater, v. 1. c. were exploited in the piece a machines (e.g. Corneille, Andromede , 1650), in semi-burlesque mythological comedy (Moliere, Amphitryon , 1668), and in tragicomedy and opera libretti (Quinault; La Fontaine). The attraction of v. l. c lay not only in their improvised, volatile, even acrobatic quality, but also in their apparently unlaboured and flexible naturalness. In the Preface to his first Fables, La Fontaine wrote: “The author wanted to test which form was most appropriate for setting stories in verse. It was his belief that irregular verse, which has a character very close to that of prose, might seem the most natural and, consequently, the best.” —R. Bray, “L’Introduction des vers mêlés sur la scene clas-sique”, PMLA 66 (1951); W. Elwert, “La Vogue des vers mêlés dans la poésie du 17e siècle”, XVIIe siècle 88 (1970); C. Scott, Vers libre (1990), ch. 2.
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