Villanelle
Definition:
A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines, two repeating rhymes, and two refrains. The
poem is made of five tercets and one quatrain stanzas. The first and third lines of the opening
stanza are repeated alternately as the last line of each of the stanzas that follow, and both are
repeated in the two concluding lines of the poem. This repetition serves as the refrain, with the
two repeated lines serving as each their own refrain.
An example of the refrain and rhyme scheme is illustrated as,
A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2
“A1” and “A2” are the refrains being alternately repeated—except for the first and last, where
both refrains appear. The lower case “a”'s and “b”'s are the rhyme scheme, which is a constant
aba/aba/aba and so on.
Villanelles in their rigid form arose in the nineteenth century with the French poet Théodore de
Banville. Before then, the villanelle was not so rigidly formed and a looser format was popular
during the Renaissance in the form of Spanish and Italian dance-songs. Historically, the poems
were characterized by use of simple, provincial themes, rather than being characterized by the
rigid form it now has today.
Examples:
See Next Page
Useful Links:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5796#sthash.8rMB63NU.dpuf
http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/villanelle.html
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