Mr. Francis European Literature
Terza Rima: verse for Literary Application Essay
For your assignment on Dante's Inferno, you will compose a short verse (7-22 lines) in terza rima to introduce your circle and to serve as an epigraph to your essay.
The Academy of American Poets describes the form as follows:
Invented by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the late thirteenth century to structure his three-part epic poem, The Divine Comedy, terza rima is composed of tercets woven into a rhyme scheme that requires the end-word of the second line in one tercet to supply the rhyme for the first and third lines in the following tercet. Thus, the rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc, ded) continues through to the final stanza or line. Dante chose to end each canto of the The Divine Comedy with a single line that completes the rhyme scheme with the end-word of the second line of the preceding tercet. Terza rima is typically written in an iambic line, and in English, most often in iambic pentameter. If another line length is chosen, such as tetrameter, the lines should be of the same length. There are no limits to the number of lines a poem composed in terza rima may have. Possibly developed from the tercets found in the verses of Provencal troubadours, who were greatly admired by Dante, the tripartite stanza likely symbolizes the Holy Trinity. Early enthusiasts of terza rima, including Italian poets Boccaccio and Petrarch, were particularly interested in the unifying effects of the form.1
Therefore, the shortest possible verse for this assignment will have an ABABCBC rhyme scheme; the longest will end with GHGH. In Inferno, complete sentences are composed of complete tercets excepting the final line. The final line may be a complete sentence. You are not required to compose your verse in iambic pentameter.
An epigraph is "a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme."2 Suggested format: left justified, single-spaced, first line of each tercet indented ¼-inch, 10-point Times New Roman font.
Your verse will be assessed pass/fail based on appropriateness of content.
1 “Poetic Form: Terza Rima.” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5794 2 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition