Avillanelle, also known asvillanesque,[1] is a nineteen-linepoetic form consisting of fivetercets followed by aquatrain. There are tworefrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of afixed verse form. The word derives fromLatin, thenItalian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being thepastoral.
The form started as a simpleballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)" (1606) byJean Passerat. From this point, its evolution into the "fixed form" used in the present day is debated. Despite its French origins, the majority of villanelles have been written in English, a trend which began in the late nineteenth century. The villanelle has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders; its defining feature of repetition prevents it from having a conventional tone.
The wordvillanelle derives from theItalianvillanella, referring to a rustic song or dance,[2] and which comes fromvillano, meaning peasant orvillein.[3]Villano derives from theMedieval Latinvillanus, meaning a "farmhand".[4] The etymology of the word relates to the fact that the form's initial distinguishing feature was thepastoral subject.[2]
The villanelle originated as a simpleballad-like song—in imitation of peasant songs of anoral tradition—with no fixed poetic form. These poems were often of a rustic or pastoral subject matter and contained refrains.[5][6] Prior to the nineteenth century, the term would have simply meantcountry song, with no particular form implied—a meaning it retains in the vocabulary of early music.[7] According to Julie Kane, the refrain in each stanza indicates that the form descended from a "choral dance song" wherein a vocal soloist—frequently female—semi-improvised the "unique" lyrics of each stanza, while a ring of dancers—all female, or male and female mixed—chimed in with the repetitive words of the refrain as they danced around her in a circle."[8]
J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle:
Est-ce point celle que j'oy?
Je veus aller aprés elle.
Tu regretes ta femelle,
Helas! aussi fai-je moy,
J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle.
(I have lost my turtledove:
Isn't that her gentle coo?
I will go and find my love.
Here you mourn your mated love;
Oh, God—I am mourning too:
I have lost my turtledove.)
The fixed-form villanelle, containing the nineteen-line dual-refrain, derives fromJean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)", published in 1606.[10] TheNew Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993) suggests that this became the standard "villanelle" whenprosodists such asCésar-Pierre Richelet based their definitions of the form on that poem.[2] This conclusion is refuted by Kane, however, who argues that it was instead Pierre-Charles Berthelin's additions to Richelet'sDictionnaire de rimes that first fixed the form, followed a century later by the poetThéodore de Banville;[11] his creation of a parody to Passerat's "J'ay perdu ..." would leadWilhelm Ténint and others to think that the villanelle was an antique form.[12]
Despite its classification and origin as a French poetic form, by far the majority of villanelles have been written in English.[6] Subsequent to the publication of Théodore de Banville's treatise on prosody "Petit traité de poésie française" (1872), the form became popularised in England throughEdmund Gosse andAustin Dobson.[13] Gosse, Dobson,Oscar Wilde,Andrew Lang, andJohn Payne were among the first English practitioners—theirs and other works were published in Gleeson White'sBallades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, &c. Selected (1887),[14] which contained 32 English-language villanelles composed by 19 poets.[15]
Most modernists disdained the villanelle, which became associated with the overwrought formalaestheticism of the 1890s, i.e., thedecadent movement in England.[16] In his 1914 novelA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,James Joyce includes a villanelle written by his protagonistStephen Dedalus.[16]William Empson revived the villanelle more seriously in the 1930s,[17] and his contemporaries and friendsW. H. Auden andDylan Thomas also picked up the form.[18] Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night" is perhaps the most renowned villanelle of all.Theodore Roethke andSylvia Plath wrote villanelles in the 1950s and 1960s,[18] andElizabeth Bishop wrote a particularly famous and influential villanelle, "One Art," in 1976. The villanelle reached an unprecedented level of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of theNew Formalism.[19] Since then, many contemporary poets have written villanelles, and they have often varied the form in innovative ways; in their anthology of villanelles (Villanelles),Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali devote a section entitled "Variations on the Villanelle" to such innovations.[20]
The villanelle consists of fivestanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four lines (aquatrain) for a total of nineteen lines.[21] It is structured by two repeatingrhymes and tworefrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.[21] The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle is:
Refrain 1 (A1)
|
All 'a' lines rhyme, similarly all lines, and and indicate two different refrains which are repeated exactly. It can beschematized as.[6]
The villanelle has no established meter, although most 19th-century villanelles usedtrimeter ortetrameter and most 20th-century villanelles usedpentameter. Slight alteration of the refrain line is permissible.[22]
With reference to the form's repetition of lines, Philip K. Jason suggests that the "villanelle is often used, and properly used, to deal with one or another degree of obsession"[23] citingSylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song" amongst other examples. He notes the possibility for the form to evoke, through the relationship between the repeated lines, a feeling of dislocation and a "paradigm forschizophrenia".[23] This repetition of lines has been considered to prevent villanelles from possessing a "conventional tone"[24] and that instead they are closer in form to a song orlyric poetry.[24]Stephen Fry opines that the villanelle "is a form that seems to appeal to outsiders, or those who might have cause to consider themselves as such", having a "playful artifice" which suits "rueful, ironic reiteration of pain orfatalism".[25] (In spite of this, the villanelle has also often been used forlight verse, as for instanceLouis Untermeyer's "Lugubrious Villanelle of Platitudes".[26][27])
On the relationship between form and content,Anne Ridler notes in an introduction to her own poem "Villanelle for the Middle of the Way" a point made byT. S. Eliot, that "to use very strict form is a help, because you concentrate on the technical difficulties of mastering the form, and allow the content of the poem a more unconscious and freer release".[28] In an introduction to his own take on the form, entitled "Missing Dates",William Empson suggests that while the villanelle is a "very rigid form", nonethelessW. H. Auden—in his long poemThe Sea and the Mirror—had "made it sound absolutely natural like the innocent girl talking".[29]
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.[30]
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