rondeau

(roundel)

   The rondeau began as one of the fixed forms of French lyric poetry characterized by the use of repetition and only two rhymes, as discussed by GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT in the Remède de Fortune (ca. 1340) and EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS in Art de dictier (1392). Machaut’s rondeaux, like most earlier lyrics, were set to music.

   The form generally was a vehicle for the expression of the conventional sentiments of fin amor, or COURTLY LOVE, though it was also adopted by church musicians for spiritual purposes. Most often the literary rondeau consisted of 15 lines (either octosyllabic or decasyllabic) divided into three sections—a quintet, quatrain, and sestet. The first line of the poem also serves as a refrain and is repeated as the last line of the second and third sections of the poem, so that the typical rhyme scheme is aabba aabR aabbaR (where R is the refrain).

   CHAUCER introduced the form into English poetry (as he introduced the French courtly tradition into English in general). He mentions in the prologue to the LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN that in his youth he had written “many an ympne for [the God of Love’s] halydayes,/Than highten balades, roundels, virelayes” (Benson 1987, 600, F 422–23). His best-known example of what he calls a “roundel” is the concluding lyric of The PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS:

   Now welcome somer, with thy sonne softe

   That hast thes winters wedres overshake,

   And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!

   Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte,

   Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake;

   Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,

   That hast thes wyntres wedres overshake.

   Wel han they cause for to gladden ofte,

   Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make,

   Ful blissbul mowe they synge when they wake:

   Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,

   That hast thes winters wedres overshake,

   And driven away they longe nyghtes blake!

   (Benson, 394, ll. 680–92)

   Note that in Chaucer’s handling of the form, the three parts have three, four, and six lines, and the refrain consists of the first two lines for part 2, and the entire first section for part 3, so that the rhyme scheme (still consisting of two rhymes) is abb abAB abbABB. Another lyric generally attributed to Chaucer,“Merciles Beaute,” is a triple roundel in precisely the same form.

   Bibliography

   ■ Benson, Larry, et al., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.