Definition:
The word “villanelle” comes from the Italian villano (“peasant”), and a villanelle was originally a dance-song sung by a Renaissance troubadour, with a pastoral or rustic theme and no particular form. The modern form with its alternating refrain lines took shape after Jean Passerat’s famous 16th century villanelle, “J’ai perdu ma tourtourelle” (“I Have Lost My Turtle Dove”).
The word “villanelle” comes from the Italian villano (“peasant”), and a villanelle was originally a dance-song sung by a Renaissance troubadour, with a pastoral or rustic theme and no particular form. The modern form with its alternating refrain lines took shape after Jean Passerat’s famous 16th century villanelle, “J’ai perdu ma tourtourelle” (“I Have Lost My Turtle Dove”).
The villanelle is a poem of 19 lines — five triplets and a quatrain, using only two rhymes throughout the whole form. The entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12 and 18 and the third line is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19 — so that the lines which frame the first triplet weave through the poem like refrains in a traditional song, and form the end of the concluding stanza. With these repeating lines represented as A1 and A2 (because they rhyme), the entire rhyme scheme is:
A1
b
A2
a
b
A1
a
b
A2
a
b
A1
a
b
A2
a
b
A1
A2
Examples:
Several villanelles are in our library here at About Poetry:
Several villanelles are in our library here at About Poetry:
- “Theocritus, A Villanelle” by Oscar Wilde (1881)
- “Villanelle of Change” by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1891)
- “Pan: a Double Villanelle” by Oscar Wilde (1913)
