Villanelles

Preceded by a historical and critical note on the villanelle with a technical villanelle.

"Of Italian origin, the villanelle, from the Italian villanella deriving from the Latin villanus (peasant), is, in literature, a kind of short pastoral poem of fixed form divided into stanzas that end with the same refrain. In music, it is an old rustic dance accompanied by song as well as a melody, an instrumental tune composed in the style of this dance.

The strict form described by Joseph Boulmier (see infra) is an 18th-century invention and does not date back to the Middle Ages, nor to the 16th century, contrary to what some poetic treatises claim. According to Julie Kane, "the villanelle was a hoax concocted by an 18th-century priest and popularized by a 19th-century satirist, based on the example of a single pre-existing specimen." According to Boulmier, the fixed form is the creation of Berthelin, in the 1751 re-edition of Richelet's rhyme dictionary. The model is Passerat's poem. This has almost nothing in common with the eighteen villanelles (or villanesques) of the 16th century. The origin of the term is the 16th-century Italian musical villanella, whose poetic form has nothing fixed or similar to Passerat's poem."