Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One of the principal divisions of a long poem.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A part or division of a poem of some length: as, the six cantos of “The Lady of the Lake.”
- n. In music; the highest voice-part in concerted music; soprano.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One of the chief divisions of a long poem; a book.
- n. The highest vocal part; the air or melody in choral music; anciently the tenor, now the soprano.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a major division of a long poem
- n. the highest part (usually the melody) in a piece of choral music
Etymologies
- Italian, from Latin cantus, song; see canticle.
Examples
“It follows the ecotopian revision of Isaiah 11 in canto viii, where babies sport with basilisks and lions lie mutated into lambs, and 'no longer now/He slays the lamb that looks him in the face/And horribly devours his mangled flesh' (211).”
“Shelley's use of the poetics of spice in canto viii of Queen Mab and the 'Fragment of an Unfinished Drama' is an example of the poetry of ornamentation and sentimentality which spawned Ecotopia, and an acknowledgement that commercial capitalism has its metonymic flows as well.”
“The metamorphosis of lion into lamb in canto viii is also fractal: we are unsure whether he is now exactly like a lamb.”
“A woman and a man, who read the last tercets aaaof a certain canto.”
jorge luis borges | the just « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground
“The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic.”
“943 I omit the rest of this canto, which is mere repetition.”
“But in the 1880s, as the effort got under way to make the Irish respectable by returning them to their imagined roots, Olcott was recruited to perform “authentic” Irish songs in an operatic, bel canto style.”
“He's just finished rehearsing the Act One finale of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Rossini's "Le Comte Ory," a lesser-known bel canto work that he calls "a really great French pastry made by an incredible Italian chef.”
“Delivering a stunning display of bel canto lyricism in that aria, Machaidze garnered the largest applause of the evening on opening night.”
The Huffington Post: Rodney Punt: A Turk in Italy Comes to Town in an Airstream Trailer
“Paul memorized one canto of "Marmion," Lloyd memorized two cantos, Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with four, till each knew the whole poem by heart.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘canto’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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