Ballade (forme fixe)

The ballade (; French: [balad]; not to be confused with the ballad) is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. It was one of the three formes fixes (the other two were the rondeau and the virelai) and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. The formes fixes were standard forms in French-texted song of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ballade is usually in three stanzas, each ending with a refrain (a repeated segment of text and music). The ballade as a verse form typically consists of three eight-line stanzas, each with a consistent metre and a particular rhyme scheme. The last line in the stanza is a refrain. The stanzas are often followed by a four-line concluding stanza (an envoi) usually addressed to a prince. The rhyme scheme is therefore usually a b a b b c b C a b a b b c b C a b a b b c b C {\displaystyle \mathrm {ababbcbC\,\,ababbcbC\,\,ababbcbC} } , where the capital C {\displaystyle \mathrm {C} } is a refrain. The many different rhyming words that are needed (the b {\displaystyle \mathrm {b} } rhyme needs at least fourteen words) makes the form more difficult for English than for French poets. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in the form. It was revived in the 19th century by English-language poets including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Other notable English-language ballade writers are Andrew Lang, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton (at Wikisource). A humorous example is Wendy Cope's Proverbial Ballade; another, by T. S. Eliot and satirising literary critics in a way akin to Catullus' Carmen 16, is entitled Triumph of Bull$#!+.