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  1. villanelle love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A 19-line poem of fixed form consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A poem in a fixed form borrowed from the French, and allied to the virelay. It consists of nineteen lines on two rimes, arranged in six stanzas, the first five of three lines, the last of four. The first and third line of the first stanza are repeated alternately as last lines from the second to the fifth stanza, and they conclude the sixth stanza. Great skill is required to introduce them naturally. The typical example of the villanelle is one by Jean Passerat (1534-1602), beginning “J'ai perdu ma tourtourelle.”

Wiktionary

  1. n. poetry a type of poetry, consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A poem written in tercets with but two rhymes, the first and third verse of the first stanza alternating as the third verse in each successive stanza and forming a couplet at the close.

Etymologies

  1. From the French (Wiktionary)
  2. French, from Italian villanella, from feminine of villanello, rustic, from villano, peasant, from Vulgar Latin *vīllānus, from Latin vīlla, country house; see weik-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The above villanelle is simply a whiny complaint, composed in boredom, regarding my inability to support myself solely through my keyboard.”

    Frustration: a villanelle

  • “The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain.”

    LearnHub Activities

  • “Jamais Hylas ne changera, the two last being the continuous refrain of a "villanelle" in which this bad man boasts his constancy in inconstancy.”

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800

  • “The poem was a beautifully constructed villanelle, however, had little meaning.”

    How to Make Your Writing Matter to Your Readers | Write to Done

  • “You get the feeling that, like the villanelle or sestina, concrete poetry is now something that poets try their hand at as a demonstration of their virtuosity rather than a poetic tactic or affinity.”

    Something concrete « Squares of Wheat

  • “The country would be a better and happier place if no one could hold a government job above GS-9 without having produced a tolerable sonnet (a villanelle for positions involving complex issues) or a readable rendition of a hundred lines of Latin, Greek or Italian literature.”

    A Proper Tory Civil Servant

  • “Educated at Amherst and later at Harvard, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, first as a cryptographer and then in combat, shocking experiences that became the source for the early villanelle "First Snow in Alsace" and the recent "Terza Rima.”

    The Wall Street Journal: A Great Living Poet's Rare Art of Reticence

  • ““That's a villanelle I'm working on,” I said, and if I sounded a bit miffed, I was.”

    Fictionaut: Spring Cleaning for Poets

  • “The strictures of the sonnet or villanelle or sestina drive you to see what can be done within those strictures.”

    INTERVIEW: Alex Irvine

  • “Her father's advocacy of Welsh nationhood and pioneering work in the translation of Welsh poetry – notably with The Burning Tree, published by Faber in 1956 – undoubtedly planted the seeds of the quiet, watchful child's own passions (one of her poems, a villanelle titled Dychwelyd, was read at the services), but the inheritance of her mother's calm, generous temperament and artistic instinct was equally salient.”

    The Guardian: Lowri Gwilym obituary

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  1. poetic form
  1. fixed form

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Comments

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  • ruzuzu But it's such a delicious word--vanilla and villainy all in one! Dec 8, 2010

  • milosrdenstvi Rage, rage against the dying of the light.




    (IMO the only good villanelle ever written.) Dec 8, 2010

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‘villanelle’ has been looked up 2754 times, loved by 3 people, added to 30 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 13.