Final answer:
The student's question concerns the rhyming scheme at the end of stanzas in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. Common stanzaic forms discussed are the quatrain and tercet, exemplified by the AABB, ABBA, AABA, ABCB, and ABA, BCB, CDC rhyme schemes seen in the works of poets like Coleridge, Dante, Frost, and Pope.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question refers to the rhyming scheme at the end of stanzas in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In poetry, a quatrain is the most common stanzaic form, which consists of four lines. Common rhyme schemes include AABB, ABBA, AABA, and ABCB. These patterns can be seen in various works of literature, such as the ballad stanza in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the heroic couplets in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
Another form is the tercet, which consists of three lines such as in Dante's Divine Comedy and Robert Frost's I Have Been Well Acquainted With the Night featuring the ABA, BCB, CDC rhyme scheme. In more complex poems, such as Keats's Eve of St Agnes, the rhyme scheme becomes more sophisticated with patterns like a b a b c d d c e f e f. The use of rhyming couplets, quatrains, and tercets contributes to the formal structure and emotional tone of a poem.