Decasyllable (
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
: ''decasillabo'',
French: ''décasyllabe'',
Serbian: ''десетерац'', ''deseterac'') is a
poetic
Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
meter of ten
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
s used in poetic traditions of
syllabic verse. In languages with a
stress accent (
accentual verse Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English, as opposed to syllabic verse which is common in syllable-timed langua ...
), it is the equivalent of
pentameter
Pentameter ( grc, πεντάμετρος, 'measuring five (feet)') is a poetic meter. А poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where a 'foot' is a combination of a particula ...
with
iambs or
trochee
In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one ...
s (particularly
iambic pentameter).
Medieval French heroic
epics (the ''
chansons de geste
The ''chanson de geste'' (, from Latin 'deeds, actions accomplished') is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late 11th and early 12th cen ...
'') were most often composed in 10 syllable verses (from which, the decasyllable was termed "heroic verse"), generally with a regular
caesura
300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation
A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. ...
after the fourth syllable. (The medieval French
romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
(''roman'') was, however, most often written in 8 syllable (or ''octosyllable'') verse.)
Use of the 10 syllable line in French poetry was eclipsed by the 12 syllable
alexandrine
Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French '' Rom ...
line, particularly after the 16th century.
Paul Valéry's great poem "The Graveyard by the Sea" (Le Cimetière marin) is, however, written in decasyllables.
Similarly,
South Slavic and in particular
Serbian epic poetry
Serbian epic poetry ( sr, Српске епске народне песме, Srpske epske narodne pesme) is a form of epic poetry created by Serbs originating in today's Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Th ...
sung with the accompaniment of the
gusle is traditionally sung in the decasyllabic verse.
In 19th-century Italian
opera, this form was often employed in the
libretto. Noting its use in the operas of
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...
, musicologist
Philip Gossett describes the composer's request to the librettist for his opera ''
Macbeth'',
Francesco Maria Piave, as follows: "I'd like to do a chorus as important as the one in ''
Nabucco'', but I wouldn't want it to have the same rhythm, and that's why I ask you for ottonari"
syllables; and then Gossett continues“Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate” from ''Nabucco'', “O Signore del tetto natio” from ''
I Lombardi'', and “Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia” from ''
Ernani'' all employ the poetic meter of decasillabi.
Geoffrey Chaucer, author of ''
The Canterbury Tales'', utilized this poetic form. Chaucer
evolved this meter into
iambs, or the alternating pattern of five stressed and unstressed syllables made famous by Shakespeare. Because Chaucer's
Middle English included many unstressed vowels at the end of words which later became silent, his poetry includes a greater number of
hendecassylables than that of
Modern English poets.
References
Notes
Sources
*
Gossett, Philip, ''Divas and Scholar: Performing Italian Opera'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008
See also
*
Meter (poetry)
*
Hexasyllable, the six-syllable line
*
Octosyllable, the eight-syllable line
*
Hendecasyllable, the eleven-syllable line
*
Dodecasyllable, the twelve-syllable line
Types of verses
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