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The Verse Novel

Extended Prose Forms

A novel-length narrative work composed in verse rather than prose, sustaining the scope, character development and plotted structure of a novel across an extended poem, a hybrid form running from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin through the contemporary young-adult verse novel revival.

Facts
Place of Origin
Russia, early 19th century, with roots in earlier verse romance; revived internationally in the 20th-21st centuries. 1
Structure
Extended narrative organized in verse, in either a fixed stanza form repeated throughout (as in Eugene Onegin's own sonnet-like stanza) or free verse, sustaining novelistic scope and plotted development. 1
Notable Example
Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1833) and Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (1986), a modern novel in Onegin stanzas. 1
Connections

Associated With

Eugene Onegin, Works

Form Of Genre

The Novel, Genres
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press

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