Villanelle
Villanelle
What does the name ‘Villanelle’
mean? What does it sound like?
During the Renaissance, the villanella and villancico (from
the Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish
dance-songs.
Fig 1
French poets who called their poems “villanelle” did not
follow any specific schemes, rhymes, or refrains. Rather,
the title implied that, like the Italian and Spanish dancesongs, their poems spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic
themes.
Fig. 2, attributed to
Thomas Gainsborough
(1727-1788)
A Highly Structured, Fixed Form
• Since then, it has evolved into a recognizable form
• 19 lines long
• Five tercets followed by a quatrain
• Repeated lines: first and third lines of the opening tercet
are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding
stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the
poem’s two concluding lines.
Rhyme scheme
There are only two rhymes throughout the whole poem:
aba aba aba aba aba abaa
How does the form communicate meaning?
• lyrical, musical
The Waking
Paradox=ambiguity
room for reader response
expresses both vibrance and fragility
epistemology → logic AND emotion
“Do not go gentle into that good night” by
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
so many things seem filled with the intent
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
places, and names, and where it was you meant
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Sources
Fig 1 http://www.spanish-art.org/images/gallery/music-renaissance.jpg
Fig. 2 http://www2.franciscan.edu/jp2/Art%20Collection/pastoral.jpg
http://www.mrbauld.com/roethwak.html (Susan Pinkus from Explicator, Summer, 1992)