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.