June 30, 2010

Maybe a Madrigal

Madrigals

Our June prompt used a poem by Vera Pavlova that was in a "form" that I couldn't identify. It's a poem in one stanza with the same opening and closing word/rhyme and three couplets between them (abbccbba).

A commenter (Marie) said that
The name of the form is madrigal or madrigale; at least the form fits under that umbrella. Seems it dates back to the fourteenth century and is sometimes used for poetry that can be set to music.  
I've heard of the form and associate it with songs. So, I did some checking and found that it's a bit unclear exactly about the form of a poetic madrigal.

The madrigal (Italian: madrigale) is the name of a form of poetry, the exact nature of which has never been decided in English. The definition given in the New English Dictionary, "a short lyrical poem of amatory character," offers no distinctive formula; some madrigals are long, and many have nothing whatever to do with love. The most important English collection of madrigals, not set to music, was published by William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) in his Poems of 1616.

Another site says that it is a "poetical form of the 16th-century Italian madrigal was a brief poem, the lines of which could be long or short. Its overall rhyme scheme and number of lines were unrestricted by rule."

Any other thoughts on the Pavlova form?

   

1 comment:

  1. Hmmmm

    ottava rima - 8 lines, abababcc

    (Spenserian is 9 lines, rhyme royal is 7 lines...)


    yah got me...

    ReplyDelete

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