A medieval French fixed form built on a refrain that opens the poem and returns after every stanza, with each stanza's closing lines borrowing the refrain's own rhyme sound to bind it back into the pattern, originally composed to be sung and danced to.
Facts
Place of OriginFrance, 13th-14th century, associated with trouvere and troubadour song. 1 StructureAn opening refrain, followed by stanzas whose final lines rhyme with the refrain and which alternate two rhyme sounds within each stanza before the refrain returns. 1 Notable ExampleGuillaume de Machaut's virelais, composed as both poems and musical settings. 1 Connections
Associated With
Form Of Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
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