canzone

(plural: canzoni)

   The canzone was a late medieval lyric form popular in Italy among poets influenced by the Provençal TROUBADOURS. Derived largely from the Occitan CANSO, particularly as practiced by the troubadour GIRAUT DE BORNEIL, the canzone was usually a poem of five to seven stanzas with an identical rhyme scheme. Stanzas could range from seven to 20 lines, generally of 11 syllables, often ending with a commiato (similar to the envoi of a French BALLADE)—a short stanza half the length of the others, serving as a summary or closing. In De VULGARI ELOQUENTIA, DANTE calls the canzone the noblest form of Italian verse, and says it is the ideal genre for dealing with the three highest subjects of poetry: valor, virtue, and love. But in practice, the chief subject of the canzoni that survive from late medieval Italy is love. The form seems to have been used first by GUITTONE D’AREZZO, chief poet of the Sicilian School, and then by his followers, most notably Guido GUINIZELLI and poets of the new style of Tuscan poetry, the DOLCE STIL NOVO, including Guido CAVALCANTI and DANTE himself. Perhaps most influential of all were the canzoni composed by PETRARCH in his Canzoniere. Petrarch’s canzoni, always five or six stanzas with a commiato, established a fixed form for the genre and influenced Italian poets well into the Renaissance. The standard Italian canzone came thus to be called the canzone petrarchesca. The most influential structural aspect of the canzone is described by Dante in De vulgari eloquentia. Dante describes the canzone as having a three-part structure within a two-part structure: The form, he says, is divided into two parts, the fronte (or frons in Latin), or head, and the sirma (cauda in Latin), or tail. However, the frons is further subdivided into two piedi, or feet, which are identical in structure. The cauda might contain a final commiato. Thus the structure of the canzone might be described as AA/B. This structure was to influence the development of the sonnet (with its subdividable octave followed by a sestet), and therefore the whole history of European poetry.

   Bibliography

   ■ Barber, Joseph A. “Rhyme Scheme Patterns in Petrarch’s Canzoniere,”MLN 92 (1977): 139–145.

   ■ Wilkins, Ernest Hatch. “The Canzone and the Minnesang,” in The Invention of the Sonnet, and Other Studies in Italian Literature. Roma: Edizioni de Storia e letteratura, 1959.