A fixed thirty-nine line form built without rhyme but with rigid word repetition: six stanzas of six lines each, using the same six end words in a fixed rotating order from stanza to stanza, followed by a three-line envoi that uses all six words again, two per line. Invented by the Occitan troubadour Arnaut Daniel in the twelfth century, the form was carried into Italian by Dante and Petrarch and later revived in English by poets including Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop and W. H. Auden, drawn to the way the form's mechanical constraint forces unexpected turns of meaning as the same six words recur in new contexts.
Facts
Place of OriginProvence, in the Occitan-language poetry of 12th-century troubadours; invention of the form is usually attributed to Arnaut Daniel. 1 StructureSix stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi; the words ending each line of the first stanza are reused as line endings in each following stanza, rotated in a set pattern. 1 Notable ExampleLo ferm voler qu'el cor m'intra, written around 1200 by Arnaut Daniel, the oldest known sestina. 1 Connections
Form Of Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Influenced By
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: France, originated there.
Sources
1. Sestina (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Lead section
is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
History section
The invention of the form is usually attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of 12th-century Provence, and the first sestinas were written in the Occitan language of that region.
History section, oldest example
The oldest-known sestina is "Lo ferm voler qu'el cor m'intra", written around 1200 by Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of Aquitanian origin
History section, cledisat
he refers to it as "cledisat", meaning, more or less, "interlock"
View the Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Presss.v. Sestina
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