The virelai ancien is a poetic form originating in France in the Middle Ages. It uses a tercet of two long lines and one short line rhyming a-a-b to build stanzas. Each stanza can have any number of tercets. It uses a form of chain rhyme where the long lines of each new stanza rhyme with the short lines of the preceding one, and the short lines of the final stanza rhyme with the long lines of the first one. A simple virelai ancien rhyme scheme might be:
- a-a-b-a-a-b,
- b-b-c-b-b-c,
- c-c-d-c-c-d,
- d-d-a-d-d-a.
Famous quotes containing the word ancien:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)