Forms
The Villanelle
vil-uh-NEL
Also Known As Villanella
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A nineteen line form built from five three line stanzas and a closing four line stanza, using only two rhymes throughout and alternating two refrain lines that each recur four times, closing the poem as a final couplet. Well known examples include Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night and Elizabeth Bishop's One Art. The form's history carries a documented twist: the sixteenth century Italian and French villanella was a loose rustic song with no fixed structure, and Jean Passerat's 1606 poem Villanelle, the model usually cited as the form's origin, was itself written before any fixed rule existed. The strict nineteen line pattern used today was codified only in the later nineteenth century by French poets and theorists, then read back onto Passerat's poem as though it had always been the rule.
Facts
Place of OriginFrance; the nineteen-line fixed form dates to Jean Passerat's 1606 poem Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle), though the word itself derives from the Italian villanella, a rustic song or dance. 1 StructureNineteen lines: five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating refrains and two repeating rhymes; the first and third lines of the opening tercet alternate as the refrain closing each later stanza. 1 Notable ExampleDylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, described as perhaps the most renowned villanelle of all. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Pantoum, Forms Both forms build a whole poem from strict verbatim repetition of earlier lines, though the pantoum repeats by shifting quatrain and the villanelle by refrain.
Form Of Genre
Sources
1. Villanelle (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationEtymology sectionQuote, Etymology section
The word villanelle derives from the Italian villanella, referring to a rustic song or dance.
1. Villanelle (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
A villanelle is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes.
1. Villanelle (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationHistory sectionQuote, History section
The form started as a simple ballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle) (1606) by Jean Passerat. Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is perhaps the most renowned villanelle of all.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Presss.v. Villanelle
Pantoum (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Associated With: The Pantoum, lead sectionView the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
The Villanelle Invention Question
The sixteenth and seventeenth century villanella and villanelle were loosely structured songs with no fixed rule, and Jean Passerat's 1606 poem Villanelle, the example usually cited as the form's origin, was written before any nineteen-line rule existed. The strict fixed form used today was codified only in the later nineteenth century, by French poets and theorists, then read back onto Passerat's poem and the form's earlier history. Whether the villanelle should be described as a form with a continuous history running back to the sixteenth century, or as a nineteenth-century invention that adopted one old poem as its founding example after the fact, is disputed among historians of poetic form.
What would resolve this No new evidence is expected to settle it; the dispute is about which of two honest descriptions, continuous tradition or later invention retrofitted onto an old poem, better fits an already-known documentary record, rather than a fact-finding gap a future discovery would close.
History of French and English poetic formThe Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
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