The villanelle is a poetic form that consists of nineteen lines: five tercets (or groups of three lines) and one quatrain (or a group of four lines). The first line of the initial tercet is then repeated as the final line of the second and fourth tercets as well as the penultimate line of the quatrain. The third line of the initial tercet is also repeated as the final line of the third and fifth tercets as well as the final line of the quatrain and poem. You'll notice, as well, that these two lines that recur again and again also include an end rhyme: that is, their final words -- "night" and "light" -- rhyme with one another.
In terms of rhythm, the poem is written in iambic pentameter (five feet per line, and each foot contains one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable, for a total of ten syllables per line). Because of the repetition of these lines, as dictated by the villanelle form, as well as the regular meter, the poem maintains a fairly consistent rhythm, lending it a mood of inevitability, as though it is plodding toward an end that it cannot escape. This plodding rhythm and mood is appropriate given the subject matter -- death -- which is certainly inevitable. Although we might be able to hold it off for a while, as the speaker asks his father to do, it comes, as surely as Thomas's next end rhyme, as surely as the repeated lines.
Monday, September 3, 2012
In "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, what does the villanelle style do for the rhythm of the poem?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
Polysyndeton refers to using several conjunctions in a row to achieve a dramatic effect. That can be seen in this sentence about the child: ...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
Both boys are very charismatic and use their charisma to persuade others to follow them. The key difference of course is that Ralph uses his...
-
At the most basic level, thunderstorms and blizzards are specific weather phenomena that occur most frequently within particular seasonal cl...
-
Equation of a tangent line to the graph of function f at point (x_0,y_0) is given by y=y_0+f'(x_0)(x-x_0). The first step to finding eq...
-
Population policy is any kind of government policy that is designed to somehow regulate or control the rate of population growth. It include...
-
Gulliver cooperates with the Lilliputians because he is so interested in them. He could, obviously, squash them underfoot, but he seems to b...
No comments:
Post a Comment