Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, etc.

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
453K words
Chapters
46

Tags

English Originals Modern Poetry Slow ReadingBeautiful EssaysTraditional AestheticsEclectic ReadingMusical Rhythm

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, etc. by Gleeson WhiteAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 24, 2014

Editor's review

This book is an English-language anthology with critical commentary on European fixed forms—ballade, rondeau, chant royal, sestina, villanelle, and others—compiled by Gleeson White and issued as an early Project Gutenberg electronic text. Its value lies not in novel arguments but in gathering these now unfamiliar forms together: it offers both descriptions of the forms and examples, making it easy to study metrical patterns through repeated comparison. For anyone interested in the history of English poetic form, practicing formal verse, or doing translation research, it is a directly usable primary source. It is best treated as a working anthology: read the editor's account of each form's rules first, then choose short pieces and analyze rhyme scheme and refrain operation one by one; there is no need to read it straight through quickly. Because the original is early and its editorial conventions reflect Victorian taste, readers should supply modern prosodic background themselves and note that some of its literary judgments are no longer received opinion.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the editor's definitions of each form first, and make a one-page glossary of terms before turning to the poems.
  2. For each poem selected, mark the rhyme scheme and refrain positions first, then read through to feel the effect.
  3. Read examples of the same form side by side to compare rule variants.
  4. After reading, imitate a short rondeau or villanelle to consolidate your understanding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46

FAQ

Is this book a poetry collection or a guide to poetic forms? Both. It anthologizes examples around fixed forms such as the ballade, rondeau, chant royal, sestina, and villanelle, and includes explanations of their rules, so it is better used as an annotated form anthology than as a pure collection for appreciation.
Can I read it without a background in prosody? Yes, but you will need to build the basics as you go. It is advisable to learn concepts such as rhyme scheme, refrain, and stanza first, then use the book's explanations to compare poem by poem; if you are completely unfamiliar with English prosodic terminology, the threshold will be noticeably higher.
What should I note when reading the electronic edition? This is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, formatted mainly as plain text, so indentation and line breaks may display differently across devices. When reading formal verse, use a reader that preserves line breaks, and enlarge the font as needed to identify rhyme positions.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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