Tercet
{{Short description|Poetry composed of three lines}}
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.William Baer, Writing metrical poetry: contemporary lessons for mastering traditional forms, 2006, "Chapet 9: The Tercet" pp 128ff.
Examples of tercet forms
English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same rhyme, AAA; triplets are rather rare; they are more customarily used sparingly in verse of heroic couplets or other couplet verse, to add extraordinary emphasis.Baer 2006.
Other types of tercet include an enclosed tercet where the lines rhyme in an ABA pattern and terza rima where the ABA pattern of a verse is continued in the next verse by making the outer lines of the next stanza rhyme with the central line of the preceding stanza, BCB, as in the terza rima or terzina form of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. There has been much investigation of the possible sources of the Dantesque terzina, which Benedetto Croce characterised as "linked, enclosed, disciplined, vehement and yet calm".Croce, (M.E. Moss, tr.) Essays on Literature and Literary Criticism, 1990, "Dante's poetry", p 290. William Baer observes of the tercets of terza rima, "These interlocking rhymes tend to pull the listener's attention forward in a continuous flow.... Given this natural tendency to glide forward, terza rima is especially well-suited to narration and description".Baer 2006, p. 130.
The tercet also forms part of the villanelle, where the initial five stanzas are tercets, followed by a concluding quatrain.{{Cite web|date=2017-05-21|title=Tercet - Examples and Definition of Tercet|url=https://literarydevices.net/tercet/|access-date=2021-06-29|website=Literary Devices|language=en-US}}{{Cite book|last=Claggett|first=Mary Frances|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8g9KAAAAYAAJ|title=Teaching Writing: Craft, Art, Genre|date=2005|publisher=National Council of Teachers of English|isbn=978-0-8141-5250-8|language=en}}{{Cite book|last=Soles|first=Derek|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5LkWAQAAMAAJ|title=The Prentice Hall Pocket Guide to Understanding Literature|date=2002|publisher=Prentice Hall|isbn=978-0-13-026994-2|language=en}}
A tercet may also form the separate halves of the ending sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet, where the rhyme scheme is ABBAABBACDCCDC, as in Longfellow's "Cross of Snow". For example, while "Cross of Snow" is indeed a Petrarchan sonnet, it does not follow the form of ABBA, ABBA CDC, CDC.{{Cite book|last=Kahn|first=Aaron M.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WLwcEAAAQBAJ|title=The Oxford Handbook of Cervantes|date=2021-02-16|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-106058-8|language=en}}{{Cite book|last=Cox|first=Virginia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fPAMXG_0NUYC|title=Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance|date=2013-07-31|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=978-1-4214-0950-4|language=en}} Instead, its form is ABBA CDDC EFG EFG. A tercet also ends sestinas where the keywords of the lines before are repeated in a highly ordered form.
History
Tercets (or tristichs) using parallelism appear in Biblical Hebrew poetry.Kugel, James The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism & Its History. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1981 {{ISBN|9780801859441}}[http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11902-parallelism-in-hebrew-poetry Jewish Encyclopedia.com]
The tercet was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. It was employed by Shelley and is the form used in Byron's The Prophecy of Dante.Noted in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 1948, s.v. "tercet", "terza rima"
See also
References
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External links
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- [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174352 Threnos tercet stanzas 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' William Shakespeare]
- [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176777 Robert Herrick's rhymed example 'Upon Julia's Clothes']
{{Poetic forms}}