Villanelle Villanelle

What does the name ‘Villanelle’ mean? What does it sound like? During the Renaissance, the villanella and villancico (from the Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish dance-songs.

Fig 1 French poets who called their poems “villanelle” did not follow any specific schemes, rhymes, or refrains. Rather, the title implied that, like the Italian and Spanish dance- songs, their poems spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic themes.

Fig. 2, attributed to Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) A Highly Structured, Fixed Form

• Since then, it has evolved into a recognizable form • 19 lines long • Five tercets followed by a quatrain • Repeated lines: first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Rhyme scheme

There are only two rhymes throughout the whole poem: aba aba aba aba aba abaa

How does the form communicate meaning? • lyrical, musical The Waking

Paradox=ambiguity room for reader response expresses both vibrance and fragility epistemology → logic AND emotion “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day; And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Because their words had forked no lightning they Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or so many things seem filled with the intent next-to-last, of three loved houses went. to be lost that their loss is no disaster. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture places, and names, and where it was you meant I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident to travel. None of these will bring disaster. the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. Sources

Fig 1 http://www.spanish-art.org/images/gallery/music-renaissance.jpg Fig. 2 http://www2.franciscan.edu/jp2/Art%20Collection/pastoral.jpg http://www.mrbauld.com/roethwak.html (Susan Pinkus from Explicator, Summer, 1992)