The ''romance'' (the term is Spanish, and is pronounced accordingly: ) is a metrical form used in Spanish poetry.A. Robert Lauer
Spanish Metrification
, University of Oklahoma. Accessed online 2010-02-10. It consists of an indefinite series (''tirada'') of verses, in which the even-numbered lines have a near-rhyme ( assonance) and the odd lines are unrhymed.Ana Rodríguez-Fischer, ''Prosa española de vanguardia'', Volume 249 of Clásicos Castalia, Editorial Castalia, 1999. . p. 92''n''
Available
on

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

. The lines are

octosyllabic The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie ...

(eight syllables to a line);Romance
Diccionario de la Lengua Española, Vigésima segunda edición, Real Academia Española. Accessed online 2010-02-10. a similar but far less common form is hexasyllabic (six syllables to a line) and is known in Spanish as ''romancillo'' (a diminutive of ''romance''); that, or any other form of less than eight syllables may also be referred to as ''romance corto'' ("short romance"). A similar form in alexandrines (12 syllables) also exists, but was traditionally used in Spanish only for learned poetry (''mester de clerecía''). Poems in the ''romance'' form may be as few as ten verses long, and may extend to over 1,000 verses. They may constitute either epics or erudite ''romances juglarescos'' (from the Spanish word whose modern meaning is " juggler"; compare the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

''jongleur'', which can also refer to a minstrel as well as a juggler). The epic forms trace back to the ''

cantares de gesta A ''cantar de gesta'' is the Spanish equivalent of the Old French medieval ''chanson de geste'' or "songs of heroic deeds". The most important ''cantares de gesta'' of Castile were: * The '' Cantar de Mio Cid'', where the triumph of the true n ...

'' (the Spanish equivalent of the French ''

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 ...

'') and the lyric forms to the Provençal '' pastorela''. In the

Spanish Golden Age The Spanish Golden Age ( es, Siglo de Oro, links=no , "Golden Century") is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise of the Spanish Empire under the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and the Spanish Ha ...

, however, which is when the term came into wide use, ''romance'' was not understood to be a metrical form, but a type of narration, that could be written in various metrical forms. The first published collection of ''romances'', Martín Nucio's ''Cancionero de romances'' (about 1547), was, according to Nucio's prologue, published not as poetry, but as a collection of historical source materials. Despite a considerable amount of poetic theory and history published during that period, there is no reference to ''romance'' as a term of meter prior to the nineteenth century. It did not mean an 8-syllable meter.Daniel Eisenberg, “The Romance as Seen by Cervantes”, ''El Crotalón. Anuario de Filología Española'', tomo 1 (1984), pp. 177-192, https://web.archive.org/web/20150702023853/http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/cervantes/romance.pdf, retrieved August 4, 2015.

Notes

{{reflist Spanish poetry