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Concept
Clerihew
Summary
A clerihew (ˈklɛrᵻhjuː) is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem of a type invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually a famous person, and the remainder puts the subject in an absurd light or reveals something unknown or spurious about the subject. 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."
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
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.
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.
The form was invented by and is named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley. When he was a 16-year-old pupil at St Paul's School in London, the lines of his first clerihew, about Humphry Davy, came into his head during a science class. Together with his schoolfriends, he filled a notebook with examples. The first known use of the word in print dates from 1928. Bentley published three volumes of his own clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905), published as "edited by E.
Official source
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