Fixed Forms of the Romance Tradition

Received verse forms carried into English chiefly from French and Italian prosody, each defined by a fixed pattern of rhyme, refrain or line count rather than by subject: ottava rima and terza rima's stanza patterns, the villanelle and rondeau's repeating refrains, the triolet's eight-line repeat, the sestina's end-word rotation, and the pantoum's interlocking quatrains. Belongs here: any form whose identity is its fixed structural pattern in this tradition. Does not belong here: a form defined by subject matter or by an East Asian or Middle Eastern origin, covered under their own groups below.