Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
TERZA RIMA
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: TAV-THE
del.icio.us it!
|
TERZA RIMA , or " third See also:rhyme," a See also:form of See also:verse adapted from the See also:Italian poets of the 13th See also:century. Its origin has been attributed by some to the three-lined ritournel, which was an See also:early Italian form of popular See also:poetry, and by others to the sirventes of the Provencal troubadours. The serventese in-catenate of the latter was an arrangement of triple rhymes, and unquestionably appears to have a relation with terza rima; this connexion becomes almost a certainty when we consider the admiration expressed by the Tuscan poets of the 13th century for the metrical inventions of their forerunners, the Provencals. In Italian, a See also:stanza of terza rima consists of three lines of eleven syllables, linked with the next stanza, and with the next, and so on, by a recurrence of rhymes: thus See also:aba, bcb, cdc, ded, &c., so that, however See also:long the poem is, it can be divided nowhere without severing the continuity of the rhyme. Schuchardt has See also:developed an ingenious theor at these successive terzinas are really chains of ritourneust as ottava rima, according to the same theory, is a See also:chain of rispetti. There were, unquestionably, chains of interwoven triple rhymed lines before the days of See also:Dante, but it was certainly he who raised terza rima from the See also:category of folk-verse, and gave it See also:artistic See also:character. What this character is may best be seen by an examination of the austere and majestic lines with which the Inferno opens, no more perfect example of terza rima having ever been composed:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi retrovai per una selva obscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a See also:dir qual'era e See also:Cosa dura
Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte,
Che nel pensier rinnova la paura!"
It is impossible, however, to break off here, since there is no rhyme to forte, which has to be supplied twice in the succeeding terzina, where, however, a fresh rhyme, trovai, is introduced, linking the whole to a still further terzina, and so on, indefinitely. The only way in which a poem in terza rima can be closed is by abandoning a rhyme, as at the end of See also:Canto 1 of the Inferno, where no third rhyme is supplied to Pietro and dietro. See also:Boccaccio wrote terza rima in See also:close following of Dante, but it has not been a form very frequently adopted by Italian poets. Nor has the extreme difficulty of sustaining dignity and force in these complicated chains of verse made writers in other See also:languages very anxious to See also:adventure on terza rima. In the See also:age of See also: Probably the most successfully sustained poem in terza rima in the See also:English See also:language is Mrs See also:Browning's Casa See also:Guidi Windows (1851). The Germans have always had an ambition to write in terza rima. It was used by See also:Paul Schede, a writer of whom little is known, before the close of the 16th century, and repeatedly by See also: Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] TERZ7 |
[next] TERZI |