Villanelle

4 Key excerpts on "Villanelle"

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  eBook - PDF

  The Portable Poetry Workshop

  • Nigel McLoughlin(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  The word Villanelle (French) comes from the villanella in the Italian which itself derives from villa (house in Latin) and villano (farm labourer). Therefore, prior to the Villanelle acquiring its fixed form, it was understood to imply a possibly nostalgic rustic song in contrast to the ‘madrigal’, which had more to do with city life and courtly advancement, though ‘courtly’ composers of early sixteenth-century Italy would have written in both forms. Scholars such as Amanda French, Ronald McFarland and Annie Finch (see Bibliography) have unpicked and amplified the legacy of the vil-lanelle and their research concludes that in its early appearances it was democratic and, while based on the refrain, it had no fixed form or meter, lending itself to anonymous composition and often being packed with dialect words, bad puns and proverbial wisdom. They agree that the words would have fitted with accompanying music and there are varying reports as to whether words were fitted to pre-existing tunes or whether the verse came first. 1 How then did the notion arise that Jean Passerat’s poem (which Amanda French identifies as the only example of the period) was repre-sentative of a long tradition mapping the formal qualities of the Villanelle we write today? The answer seems to be a tale of poetic gossip and rivals in prosody. The chief French popularizer of the form was Théodore de Banville who became the second person to write in the schema above (though centuries later) and can be thought of as parodying Passerat since his poem, ‘I have lost my Limayrac’ (1845), humorously laments the loss of a person, as Passerat’s speaker bemoaned the loss of his ‘turtledove’ or lover. In the ‘fixed forms revival’ of the nineteenth century, poet-scholars tended to claim a more ancient heritage for the forms they wanted to define.

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  eBook - ePub

  Writing Feminist Autoethnography

  In Love With Theory, Words, and the Language of Women Writers

  • Elizabeth Mackinlay(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Fourteen Villanelles

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003037484-19

  ***

  7.1 Villanelle #1, “A Villanelle”

  To write with words in rhyme Because language is strange A Villanelle carries and beats in its own time

  Repeat and return at the one and the three Five threefold then a six with four To write with words in rhyme

  Learn the rules, take the rules And follow them into a certain form A Villanelle carries and beats in its own time

  In the mystery of the moment The form hands freedom over to you To write with words in rhyme

  In a serious play towards otherwise The waves in her mind signal their fear A Villanelle carries and beats in its own time

  Her form carries her own duality Kept ever so close yet apart To write with words in rhyme A Villanelle carries and beats in its own time

  I hear about the Villanelle for the first time while thinking and wondering about writing feminist autoethnography with Ursula K. Le Guin (2018, p. 81). Villanelle, she explains, is a complicated poetic form fixed into five tercets and a quatrain running on two rhymes where the first and third lines of the opening verse recur alternately at the end of the others and comprise the final two lines. At first glance the formulaic style marks a Villanelle as quite artificial and learning to write the beat of its rhyme is as difficult as it is slow. When you write a Villanelle, “by golly” you write a Villanelle, she laughs.

  I wasn’t searching for fixed form Villanelles but they arrived, and once found, fixed themselves firmly onto the waves in the mind (after Le Guin, 2004) of my writing about Beauvoir. I become fixated on writing Villanellestic words in response to her work; Villanelles become my secret fix. I fix the Villanelle with my full attention, intent on fixing one set of rhyming words to the first line, another combination to the third line, and try not to get myself in a fix worrying by the importance they hold to the composition as a whole and in reprise. Nineteen lines later my Villanelle is fixed firmly in place and I fix my sights on the arrangement of more.

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  The Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry

  2nd Edition

  • Rhian Williams(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  It is particularly prevalent in the ballad tradition, and in the fixed French forms such as the Villanelle and the ballade , but they also feature in lyric poems Stanza A group of poetic lines, defined by its arrangement of metre and rhyme . Feet, lines and rhymes of poetry have been considered; now we come to how all of these features come together into particular poetic arrangements. ‘Stanza’ is the name given to blocks of formal poetry; commonly these blocks are called ‘verses’ (especially with reference to songs), but stanza is clearer. (Note however that in blank verse such divisions are known as verse paragraphs .) ‘Stanza’ is often etymologically linked via Latin to the Italian for ‘stopping place’, but the term also applies in Italy to a chamber or room and this latter root is more helpful in thinking about the definition of a stanza of poetry. We may think that a room is most obviously defined by its function and content (beds in bedrooms; ovens in kitchens). Framing this functional definition, however, is a room’s dimensions (the length of its walls) and its decor. A stanza’s line lengths may be likened to its ‘walls’ (which form a particular set of dimensions on the page) and the rhyme scheme , which decorates the line lengths, becomes the wallpaper. In this section stanzas are arranged primarily in terms of their dimensions – the number of lines included in each – since all stanzas may be described most simply in this way. In certain fixed or named stanza arrangements the rhyme scheme or metre is specified, so these are also given in each definition. 5.1 One-line stanzas and refrains Stanza 183 as a case of heightened or concentrated emotion. A famous example is Alfred Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ (1832), in which the subject’s name is repeated as a refrain in the final line of every stanza .

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  The canzone villanesca alla napolitana

  Social, Cultural and Historical Contexts

  • Donna G. Cardamone(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Il primo libro de canzon napolitane a tre voci con due alla venetiana de Giulio Bonagiunta da San Genesi, et d’altri auttori (Venice: G. Scotto, 1565), p. 16.

  70 “[La villanella e] un componimento lirico composto di distici a rime baciate distribuiti in strofe eguali per ampiezza e distribuzione di rime e di metri, i quali distici, alcune volte, sono preceduti or seguiti da uno o piu versi liberi, altre volte no. In alcuni casi, vi sono legami tra le strofe oppure v’e il ritornello, per la maggior parte le strofe sono indipendenti l’una dall’altra. Mancano del tutto le rime alternate (ABAB) e le rime incrociate (ABBA).” Monti, Le Villanelle, pp. 47—8.

  1. The canzone villanesca alla napolitana and related forms, villanella and canzone napolitana, are strophic poems which appear to have initially depended upon popular traditions and to have later been influenced by literary styles.
  2. Strictly speaking, the terms canzone villanesca or villanella alla napolitana refer to a poetic-musical entity conceived to be sung and normally composed of four isometric strophes to accommodate a strophic musical setting. The strophes may vary from three to eight lines in length.
  3. The basic versification patterns govern the repertory during the first stage of development. The original form was created by expanding a series of strambotto couplets with a refrain, which recurs unchanging in all strophes or is modified in the final strophe to make a rhyme connection with the final couplet. The second, which was established ca. 1565, lacks a refrain and is composed of changing rhymed couplets in symmetrical positions.
  4. An appreciable number of poems, including those which evolved under pressure from the literary tradition, contain deviant metrical patterns, the result of assonant rhyme, irregularly-rhymed mutations and incomplete sets of mutations. These deviations and variations reflect a continuing need to project the essence of the popular tradition.

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