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A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually a famous person put in an absurd light. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes are often forced. The line length and metre are irregular. Bentley invented the clerihew in school and then popularized it in books. One of his best known is this (1905): :Sir Christopher Wren :Said, "I am going to dine with some men. :If anyone calls :Say I am designing St. Paul's." ==Form== A clerihew has the following properties: * It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people * It has four lines of irregular length and metre (for comic effect) * The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages〔(What is a Clerihew? )〕 * The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject's name. According to a letter in the ''Spectator'' in the 1960s, Bentley said that a true clerihew has to have the name "at the end of the first line", as the whole point was the skill in rhyming awkward names.〔 Retrieved 23 November 2013.〕 Clerihews are not satirical or abusive, but they target famous individuals and reposition them in an absurd, anachronistic or commonplace setting, often giving them an over-simplified and slightly garbled description (not unlike the schoolboy style of ''1066 and All That)''. The unbalanced and unpolished poetic meter and line length parody the limerick, and the clerihew in form also parodies the eulogy. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「clerihew」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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