Sestina
A sestina (Occitan: [sesˈtinɔ]; Catalan: sextina, IPA: [sə(k)sˈtinə] or [se(k)sˈtina]; also known as sestine, sextine, sextain or sesta rima) is a structured 39 line poem consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoi of three lines. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern. The sestina is an example of a complex fixed/closed verse form.
Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of 12th century Provence, is usually attributed as the inventor of the form. It became popular in Italy, cultivated by poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Gaspara Stampa. The form remained widely used during various periods and in various places, once more becoming popular among 20th century poets.
Contents |
[edit] Form
The sestina is composed of six stanzas of six lines (sixains), followed by a three-line envoy.[1][2] There is no rhyme within the stanza, nor do the lines follow any metrical pattern, although they are traditionally cast in iambs.[2][3] The form of the sestina works by a recurrent pattern of the words that end each line,[1] a technique known as "lexical repetition".[4]
The line ending words of the second stanza appear in the order 615243. The lines of the third stanza end 364125, the fourth 532614, the fifth 451362, and finally 246531. These six ending words then appear in a closing set (envoi) of three lines (a tercet) with the first line usually containing 6 and 2, its second 1 and 4, and its third 5 and 3, but other versions exist. The pattern of the line-ending words in a sestina are represented both numerically and alphabetically in the following diagram:
| Sestina Table[1][5] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stanza 1 | Stanza 2 | Stanza 3 | Stanza 4 | Stanza 5 | Stanza 6 |
| 1 A | 6 F | 3 C | 5 E | 4 D | 2 B |
| 2 B | 1 A | 6 F | 3 C | 5 E | 4 D |
| 3 C | 5 E | 4 D | 2 B | 1 A | 6 F |
| 4 D | 2 B | 1 A | 6 F | 3 C | 5 E |
| 5 E | 4 D | 2 B | 1 A | 6 F | 3 C |
| 6 F | 3 C | 5 E | 4 D | 2 B | 1 A |
What some consider a "double sestina" is similar in structure to a sestina, but uses a pattern of twelve repeating end-words, reordered through twelve stanzas, with a six-line envoi.[6] The end-word order returns to the starting sequence in the eleventh stanza; thus it does not, unlike the “single” sestina, allow for every end-word to occupy each of the stanza ends; end-words 5 and 10 fail to couple between stanzas.
"Paysage Moralisé"
Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys,
Seeing at end of street the barren mountains,
Round corners coming suddenly on water,
Knowing them shipwrecked who were launched for islands,
We honour founders of these starving cities
Whose honour is the image of our sorrow,
Which cannot see its likeness in their sorrow
That brought them desperate to the brink of valleys;
Dreaming of evening walks through learned cities
They reined their violent horses on the mountains,
Those fields like ships to castaways on islands,
Visions of green to them who craved for water.
[edit] Background
The invention of the sestina form is traditionally attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a 12th-century troubadour of Provence,[8] although his role in its development has been questioned.[9] The form was quickly imitated by other troubadours, including the Occitan followers of Daniel such as Guilhem Peire Cazals de Caortz. Other poets on the continent cultivated the sestina during the 13-15th centuries, including Dante and Petrarch in Italy, and Luís de Camões in Portugal.[1]
The earliest example of a sestina in English is actually a double sestina, "Ye Goatherd Gods", written by Philip Sidney and published in 1590.[6] However, the form was seldom used in Britain until the end of the 19th century,[10] when it returned in the rhymed versions developed by Algernon Charles Swinburne.[1] From the 1930s, a revival of the form took place, led by poets such as W. H. Auden, and the 1950s were described as the "age of the sestina" by James E. B. Breslin.[11]
The sestina remains a popular form of poetry, and many continue to be written by contemporary poets.[12]
[edit] See also
- Fixed verse
- Villanelle, another type of fixed verse form.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Auden, Wystan Hugh. The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden. New York: Random House, 1945.
- Burt, Stephen. "Sestina! or, The Fate of the Idea of Form". Modern Philology, Vol. 105, No. 1 (2007), pp. 218-241. Accessed 29 January 2012.
- Caplan, David. Questions of possibility: contemporary poetry and poetic form. US: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0195313253
- Davidson, F. J. A. "The Origin of the Sestina". Modern Language Notes, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1910), pp. 18-20. Accessed 29 January 2012.
- Ferguson, Margaret et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. US: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-393-96820-0
- Fry, Stephen. The Ode Less Travelled. UK: Arrow Books, 2007. ISBN 9780099509349
- Preminger, Alex et al. The New Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-691-02123-6
- Spanos, Margaret. "The Sestina: An Exploration of the Dynamics of Poetic Structure". Medieval Academy of America, Vol. 53, No. 3 (1978), pp. 545-557. Accessed 29 January 2012.
[edit] External links
 |
Look up sestina in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
