Terza Rima (redirected from terze rime)

terza rima

Verse form consisting of tercets, or three-line stanzas, in which the second line of each rhymes with the first and third lines of the next. The series ends with a separate line that rhymes with the second line of the last stanza, so that the rhyme scheme is aba, bcb, cdc, …, yzy, z. Dante, in The Divine Comedy (c. 1310–14), was the first to use terza rima in a long poem. A demanding form, it has not been widely adopted in languages less rich in rhymes than Italian. It was introduced into England by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. Poets who have experimented with terza rima include Percy B. Shelley, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and W.H. Auden; Derek Walcott's book-length Omeros is written in modified terza rima.

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Terza Rima 

a verse form consisting of three-line stanzas linked by the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ... yzy z. The terza rima is thus a continuous rhyming chain of any length, suitable for large-scale works. It was first used in Italian poetry of the 13th century and became an accepted verse form with its appearance in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The terza rima was imitated in almost all the European literatures, especially by the German romantics and Russian symbolists, but its later use was limited to experimentation and stylization.