Ottava Rima

ottava rima (ōtä`və rē`mə): see pentameter.

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ottava rima

Italian stanza form composed of eight 11-syllable lines, rhyming abababcc. It originated in the late 13th and early 14th centuries and was established by Giovanni Boccaccio as the standard form for Italian epic and narrative verse. When the form appeared in English, the lines were shortened to 10 syllables. In the 17th–18th century, English ottava rima was written in iambic pentameter and used for heroic poetry. Notably effective in Lord Byron's Beppo (1818) and Don Juan (1819–24), it was also used by Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Keats, Percy B. Shelley, Robert Browning, and William Butler Yeats.

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Ottava Rima 

in versification, an eight-lined hendecasyllabic stanza, rhyming abababcc.

The ottava rima developed in Italian poetry in the 14th century and became the traditional stanza of Italian and Spanish Renaissance epic verse, for example Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and Camões’ Os Lusíadas. In other literatures, the ottava rima was for a long time used only for translations and imitations. In the 19th century Byron used it for his lyrical satires Beppo and Don Juan. In his narrative poem The Little House in Kolomna, A. S. Pushkin followed Byron’s example. Pushkin’s poem, in turn, became the model for A. K. Tolstoy’s The Dream of Popov and A. A. Fet’s The Two Lindens.

In Russian versification, the ottava rima is written in five- and six-foot iambics, generally with alternating masculine and feminine rhymes (the rule of alternation).