Hudibrastic is a type of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

verse named for Samuel Butler's ''

Hudibras ''Hudibras'' is a vigorous satirical poem, written in a mock-heroic style by Samuel Butler (1613–1680), and published in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678. The action is set in the last years of the Interregnum, around 1658–60, immediatel ...

'', published in parts from 1663 to 1678.Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, For the poem, Butler invented a

mock-heroic Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature. Typically, mock-heroic works either put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic ...

verse structure.

Description

Instead of

pentameter Pentameter ( grc, πεντάμετρος, 'measuring five ( feet)') is a poetic meter. А poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where a 'foot' is a combination of a particul ...

, the lines were written in

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. The ...

. The rhyme scheme is the same as in heroic verse (aa, bb, cc, dd, etc.), but Butler used frequent

feminine rhyme Masculine ending and feminine ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. "Masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable. "Feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. T ...

for humor.Baldick, Christopher (1996).
Hudibrastic verse
in ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms''. Oxford Reference Online (subscription required), Oxford University Press. Retrieved on February 27, 2007.

Example

The first fourteen lines of ''Hudibras'' illustrate the verse form: :When civil dudgeon first grew high, :And men fell out they knew not why; :When hard words, jealousies, and fears, :Set folks together by the ears, :And made them fight, like mad or drunk, :For Dame Religion, as for punk; :Whose honesty they all durst swear for, :Though not a man of them knew wherefore: :When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded :With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded, :And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, :Was beat with fist, instead of a stick; :Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, :And out he rode a colonelling.

Further description

The rhyme of "swear for" with "wherefore" and "ecclesiastic" with "(in)stead of a stick" are surprising, unnatural, and humorous. Additionally, the rhyme of "-don dwelling" with "a colonelling" is strained to the point of breaking, again for humorous effect. Further, the rhyme scheme in a Hudibrastic will imply inappropriate comparisons. For example, the rhyme of "drunk" and "punk" (meaning "a prostitute") implies that the religious ecstasies of the

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

s were the same as that of sexual intercourse and inebriation. The hudibrastic has been traditionally used for

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Du ...

, for example, wrote nearly all of his poetry in hudibrastics.

Notes

{{reflist Poetic forms 17th-century poetry English poetry