Chaucer's meter is described as which meter?

• A. Blank verse
• B. Free verse
• C. Trochaic tetrameter
• D. Iambic pentameter

Answer: (D)

Chaucer’s verse follows lines that feel like five-beat feet with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one in each foot. That pattern is iambic pentameter, and because these lines also rhyme at the end, Chaucer often uses rhymed pentameter (rhymed couplets). This combination gives the steady, singing rhythm you hear in his poetry, like in lines such as “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,” which carry roughly ten syllables with the natural iambic feel.

It isn’t blank verse, which would be unrhymed iambic pentameter, and it isn’t free verse, which has no regular meter. It isn’t trochaic tetrameter, which would use four feet per line with a stressed-unstressed pattern. So the meter described for Chaucer is iambic pentameter.