Ottava Rima

Created: March 14, 2021 11:17 AM
Forest status: #soil
Last Edited: June 28, 2021 9:30 PM
Retention Rating: #2⭐⭐
Review Due: July 18, 2021 9:30 PM

The term ottava rima is Italian, as is this verse form, comprising eight-line stanzas rhymed abababcc. Like the Heroic Couplet , it was first used to write about grand, heroic things; but later, it was used, especially in English, for mock-heroic poems, most famously Byron’s long narrative poem Don Juan, where the rhymes were also often comically polysyllabic (as with ‘satire, he’ and ‘flattery/battery’ here):

I am no flatterer – you’ve supped full of flattery:
They say you like it too – ’tis no great wonder:
He whose whole life has been assault and battery,
At last may get a little tired of thunder;
And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he
May like being praised for every lucky blunder;
Called ‘Saviour of the Nations’ – not yet saved,
And Europe’s Liberator – still enslaved.