Ottava rima

Ottava rima is an eight-line stanza form, traditionally written in hendecasyllables and rhyming ABABABCC. Its closing couplet often provides a turn, summary, or punch line.

Rhyme scheme: A pattern describing how end rhymes recur across lines of poetry. ABABABCC names the stanza’s defining sequence of rhyming line endings.
Italian Renaissance literature: Literature produced in Italy during the Renaissance, especially from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Ottava rima became a major narrative stanza in this literary culture.
Orlando Furioso: Ludovico Ariosto’s Italian epic romance, published in its final form in 1532. Its linked ottava rima stanzas sustain a sprawling tale of love and chivalry.
Terza rima: A linked tercet verse form with interlocking rhyme, commonly patterned ABA BCB CDC. Its chain of rhymes carries momentum across stanzas, unlike ottava rima’s self-contained couplet ending.
Lord Byron: A British Romantic poet whose major works include Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan. His English ottava rima made the form a vehicle for digression and satire.
Hendecasyllable: A metrical line of eleven syllables, central to traditional Italian poetry. Ottava rima’s Italian lines traditionally use this meter.
Giovanni Boccaccio: A fourteenth-century Italian writer whose works helped establish vernacular literary forms. His poetry helped develop the stanza form before its Renaissance prominence.
Gerusalemme liberata: Torquato Tasso’s Italian epic poem about the First Crusade, published in 1581. It shows ottava rima carrying a solemn religious and heroic narrative.
Rhyme royal: A seven-line stanza form, usually rhyming ABABBCC. It shares a closing couplet but reaches it through a shorter stanza and different rhyme pattern.
Thomas Wyatt: An English Renaissance poet who helped introduce Italian poetic forms into English literature. His translations and experiments contributed to the English reception of Italian verse forms.

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