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Sonnets For An Old Century
A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in 13th-century Sicily, the sonnet was in time taken up in many European-language areas, mainly to express romantic love at first, although eventually any subject was considered acceptable. Many formal variations were also introduced, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit – and even of rhyme altogether in modern times. Romance languages Sicilian Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention at the Court of Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The Sicilian School of poets who surrounded Lentini then spread the form to the mainland. Those earliest sonnets no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, however, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect. The form consisted of a pair of quatrains followed by a p ...
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Poetic Form
Poetry (from the Greek word '' poiesis'', "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm (via metre), and sound symbolism, to produce musical or other artistic effects. They also frequently organize these effects into poetic structures, which may be strict or loose, conventional or invented by the poet. Poetic structures vary dramatically by language and cultural convention, but they often use rhythmic metre (patterns of syllable stress or syllable (mora) weight). They may also use repeating patterns of phonemes, phoneme groups, tones (phonemic pitch shifts found in tonal languages), words, or entire phrases. These include ...
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Qasida
The qaṣīda (also spelled ''qaṣīdah''; plural ''qaṣā’id'') is an ancient Arabic word and form of poetry, often translated as ode. The qasida originated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and passed into non-Arabic cultures after the Arab Muslim expansion. The word ''qasida'' is originally an Arabic word (, plural ''qaṣā’id'', ), and is still used throughout the Arabic-speaking world; it was borrowed into some other languages such as (alongside , ''chakameh''), and . The classic form of qasida maintains both monometer, a single elaborate meter throughout the poem, and monorhyme, where every line rhymes on the same soundAkiko Motoyoshi Sumi, ''Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: ''Waṣf'', Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory'', Brill Studies in Middle Eastern literatures, 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 1. It typically runs from fifteen to eighty lines, and sometimes more than a hundred. Well-known examples of this genre include the poems of the Mu'allaqat (a collectio ...
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Octave (poetry)
Octave has been derived from the Latin word ''octāva'', which means “eighth part.” It is a verse form that contains eight lines, which usually appear in an iambic pentameter. In simple words, it can be any stanza in a poem that has eight lines and follows a rhymed or unrhymed meter.The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.''p. 223 Ed. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton UP, 1993 An octave is a verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter (in English) or of hendecasyllables (in Italian). The most common rhyme scheme for an octave is ABBA ABBA. An octave is the first part of a Petrarchan sonnet The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets.Spiller, Michael R. G. The Devel ..., which ends with a contrasting sestet. In traditional Italian sonnets the octave always ends with a c ...
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Petrarch
Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch was later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the . Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the "Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages".
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Guido Cavalcanti
Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300) was an Italians, Italian poet. He was also a friend of and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri. Historical background Cavalcanti was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its economic, political, intellectual and artistic ascendancy as one of the leading cities of the Renaissance. The disunited Italian peninsula was dominated by a political particularism that pitted city-states against one another, often with this factionalism contributing to the fractious and sometimes violent political environments of each ''comune''. The domination of medieval religious interpretations of reality, morality and society was challenged by the rise of a new urban culture across Europe that gradually supplanted rural, local, ecclesiastical and feudal ways of thinking. There was an accompanying return to study, and to interpretation and emulation of the classics, known as a revival of antiquity. New secular and humanis ...
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Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ) and later christened by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. Dante chose to write in the vernacular, specifically, his own Tuscan dialect, at a time when much literature was still written in Latin, which was accessible only to educated readers, and many of his fellow Italian poets wrote in French or Provençal dialect, Provençal. His ' (''On Eloquence in the Vernacular'') was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as ''La Vita Nuova, The New Life'' (1295) and ''Divine Comedy'' helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His wo ...
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Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of 3,660,834 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital city is Florence. Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its influence on high culture. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and of the foundations of the Italian language. The prestige established by the Tuscan dialect's use in literature by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini led to its subsequent elaboration as the language of culture throughout Italy. It has been home to many figures influential in the history of art and science, and contains well-known museums such as the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti. Tuscany is also known for its wines, including Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano, Brunello di Montalcino and white Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Having a strong linguistic and cultural identity, ...
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Guittone D'Arezzo
Guittone d'Arezzo (Arezzo, 123521 August 1294) was a Tuscan poet and the founder of the Tuscan School. He was an acclaimed secular love poet before his conversion in the 1260s, when he became a religious poet joining the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1256, he was exiled from Arezzo due to his Guelf sympathies. Biography Son of Viva di Michele and chamberlain of his area, he travelled often for business. A passionate supporter of the Guelfs, he lamented in a celebrated ''canzone'' the Ghibelline victory of Montaperti (1260). Guittone had a wife and three children who he would later abandon in 1256 after a spiritual crisis. He joined the Order of the Knights of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a relatively exclusive group permitting members on the basis of financial background, showing Guittone's aristocratic familial origin and wealth. Pertile & Brand 1999, p. 15. The group's primary goal was to favor and promote the peace between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions. Guittone ...
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Petrarch Canzoniere
Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch was later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the . Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the "Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages".
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Zajal
''Zajal'' () is a traditional form of oral Strophic form, strophic poetry declaimed in a colloquial dialect. The earliest recorded zajal poet was Ibn Quzman of al-Andalus who lived from 1078 to 1160. Most scholars see the Andalusi Arabic ''zajal'', the Stress (linguistics), stress-syllable versification of which differs significantly from the quantitative meter of classical Arabic poetry, as a form of expression adapted from Iberian Romance languages, Romance languages' popular poetry traditions into Arabic—first at the folkloric level and then by lettered poets such as Ibn Quzman. It is generally conceded that the early ancestors of Levantine dialectical poetry were the Andalusian ''zajal'' and ''Muwashshah, muwashshaḥah'', brought to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean by Moors fleeing Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An early master of Egyptian zajal was the fourteenth century ''zajjāl'' Abu ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghubārī. Zajal's origins may be ancient but it ...
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Muwashshah
''Muwashshah'' ( ' ' girdled'; plural '; also ' 'girdling,' pl. ') is a strophic poetic form that developed in al-Andalus in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The ', embodying the Iberian rhyme revolution, was the major Andalusi innovation in Arabic poetry, and it was sung and performed musically. The ''muwaššaḥ'' features a complex rhyme and metrical scheme usually containing five ' ( 'branches'; sing. '), with uniform rhyme within each strophe, interspersed with ' ( 'threads for stringing pearls'; sing. ') with common rhyme throughout the song, as well as a terminal '' kharja'' ( 'exit'), the song's final ''simṭ'', which could be in a different language. Sephardic poets also composed ' in Hebrew, sometimes as ''contrafacta'' imitating the rhyme and metrical scheme of a particular poem in Hebrew or in Arabic. This poetic imitation, called ' ( 'contrafaction'), is a tradition in Arabic poetry. The '' kharja'', or the ''markaz'' ( 'center') of the ', its fin ...
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Andalusi Arabic
Andalusi Arabic or Andalusian Arabic () was a variety or varieties of Arabic spoken mainly from the 8th to the 15th century in Al-Andalus, the regions of the Iberian Peninsula under the Muslim rule. Arabic spread gradually over the centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia, primarily through conversion to Islam, although it was also learned and spoken by Christians and Jews. Arabic became the language of administration and was the primary language of literature produced in al-Andalus; the Andalusi vernacular was distinct among medieval Arabic vernaculars in that it was used in poetry, in '' zajal'' and the '' kharjas'' of '' muwaššaḥāt''. Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation of bilingualism with Andalusi Romance (known popularly as ''Mozarabic'') until the 13th century. Arabic in Iberia was also characterized by diglossia: in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educated idiolect and a register of the less-p ...
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