We explain what an acrostic is, the origin of the term and its function. Also, examples of the most famous acrostics.
What is an acrostic?
An acrostic is a type of poem or poetic composition, written in verse or in prose, whose initial, middle or final letters of each line, when read vertically, make up a word or expression. Its name comes from the Greek akros ("Limb") and stikhos ("Verse"), that is, it is a verse found in the extremities of others.
Acrostics are a type of poem but also a hobby or pun, which offers the reader a clue in your title, so that they can piece together the word "hidden" between the lines. Often they can be more than one, and in that sense this genre operates as a form of text "In code".
One of the most famous acrostics in the Spanish language is found in the prologue of The matchmaker , by Fernando de Rojas (c. 1470-1541), and whose verses in old Spanish make up the phrase "The bachelor Fernando de Rojas finished the comedy of Calisto and Melibea and was born in the town of Montalbán." The first of these verses are:
Silence shields and usually conceals
The lack of ingenuity of clumsy tongues;
Blazon that is contrary publishes its ebb
To whom he talks a lot without feeling much.
Like the ant that stops going
Lounging on the ground with provision,
Iactose * with wings his doom:
They took her up high, she doesn't know where to go.
The air enjoying, alien and strange,
Prey is already made of birds that fly;
* It should read "Jactose", to boast. Let us remember that at that time, the grapheme ‹j› did not exist and ‹i› was used interchangeably for the sound of the vowel and the jot.
Acrostics, on the other hand, are common as love poems, which contain the name of the person to whom it is dedicated in the first letters of their verses, or also as a way to introduce humorous or ironic comments in a poetic text. , in a veiled and original way.
Follow with: Elegy