quantitative verse Verse in which the *metre is based on the principle of quantity (i.e. the duration of a syllable’s sound), and in which the basic metrical unit, the *foot, is composed of syllables classified either as ‘long’ or as ‘short’. This metrical system is found in Greek and Latin, as well as in Arabic and some other languages, but does not apply to English verse, which uses patterns of stress rather than quantitatively measured syllables and feet. Some unfruitful attempts were, however, made in the 16th and 17th centuries to write quantitative verse in English.

quarto A size of book or page that results from folding a standard printer’s sheet twice, forming four leaves (i.e. eight pages). Many of Shakespeare’s plays first appeared in quarto editions, most of these being textually unreliable. For other book sizes, see duodecimo, folio, octavo.

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare

• British Library collection of Shakespeare Quartos viewed in facsimile.

quatrain A verse *stanza of four lines, rhymed or (less often) unrhymed. The quatrain is the most commonly used stanza in English and most modern European languages. Most *ballads and many *hymns are composed in quatrains in which the second and fourth lines rhyme (abcb or abab); the ‘heroic quatrain’ of iambic *pentameters also rhymes abab. A different *rhyme scheme (abba) is used in the *In Memoriam stanza and some other forms. The rhyming four-line groups that make up the first eight or twelve lines of a *sonnet are also known as quatrains.

Queer theory A body of academic writings that has since the early 1990s attempted to redefine and de-stabilize categories of sexuality in the light of *post-structuralist theory, and especially under the influence of Michel Foucault’s La Volonté de savoir (1976). Rooted in the lesbian and gay activism of the 1970s but now more sceptical about inherited conceptions of ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ as simple or given ‘identities’, certain gay and lesbian intellectuals and activists adopted the more controversial but also more inclusive label ‘queer’ to cover a range of sexual orientations and sub-cultures. Queer theory stresses the historical variability, fluidity, and provisional or ‘performed’ nature of sexualities (see performative), notably in the writings of Judith Butler, whose book Gender Trouble (1990) is a key text of this school. The pursuit of these concerns in the reading of literary texts is more often associated with the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whose Between Men (1985) and Epistemology of the Closet (1990) investigate the paradoxes of ‘homosocial’ male bonding and homophobia in English fiction.

Further reading: Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory (1996).

quintain (quintet) A verse *stanza of five lines. It appears in various forms, from the English *limerick and Spanish *lira and *quintilla to the Japanese *tanka. See also pentastich.

quintilla [kin-tee-yă] A Spanish stanza of five *octosyllabic lines using only two rhymes, in which no three consecutive lines are to rhyme: the usual rhyme scheme is abaab, but abbab, aabab, and other permutations are found. The form flourished in the 15th century, and is related to the four-line *redondilla. A quintilla real, however, is a stanza of five *hendacasyllabic lines.