The ''romance'' (the term is

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

, 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 Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., ''meat, bean'') or between their consonants (e.g., ''keep, cape''). However, assonance between consonants is generally called ''consonance'' in America ...

) 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 de ...

(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

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

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 ''Roma ...

s (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 Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object o ...

"; compare the French ''jongleur'', which can also refer to a

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer w ...

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 ...

'' (the Spanish equivalent of the French '' chansons de geste'') and the

lyric Lyric may refer to: * Lyrics, the words, often in verse form, which are sung, usually to a melody, and constitute the semantic content of a song * Lyric poetry is a form of poetry that expresses a subjective, personal point of view * Lyric, from ...

forms to the Provençal ''

pastorela The ''pastorela'' (, "little/young shepherdess") was an Occitan lyric genre used by the troubadours. It gave rise to the Old French ''pastourelle The pastourelle (; also ''pastorelle'', ''pastorella'', or ''pastorita'' is a typically Old Fren ...

''. 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 ...

, 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 Martin may refer to: Places * Martin City (disambiguation) * Martin County (disambiguation) * Martin Township (disambiguation) Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Austral ...

'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