How to Write a Rondeau
A Brief Guide to the Rondeau Poetic Form
The Rondeau is usually made up of a quintet, a quatrain, a sextet and a refrain, the latter stanza being made up of lines that comprise just four syllables whereas the other stanzas are all made of lines containing eight syllables each. The most common form of the Rondeau is a poem comprising fifteen lines, though some variants do exist with ten or thirteen lines only. In other words, the most common form of Rondeau consists of thirteen lines of eight syllables and two refrains which comprise half lines of two syllables each.
So, the Rondeau should begin with the Quintet structured in the following manner: line 1 should rhyme with lines 2 and 5, while lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other. Whereas the first 3 lines are commonly referred to as the A lines, the par made up of lines 3 and 4 are called the b lines. Thus, the first two lines of the quatrain should be A's while the third line should be a B. The final line of the poem will be the refrain, which is made up of the first four syllables of the very first line. The sestet of the Rondeau should consist of the first two lines which are A's and its next two lines should be Bs. The fifth line should then be an A and finally the Rondeau ends with the refrain.
A more complex form of the Rondeau is the Rondeau redoublé, which is written in two rhymes and which comprises five stanzas of four lines each, as well as one stanza of five lines. The four lines of the first stanza are repeated as the fourth lines of the second and the fifth stanzas, and the first part of the first line is repeated as a short fifth line to conclude the sixth stanza. The rhyming scheme of the Rondeau redoublé can be represented as A1,B1,A2,B2 - b,a,b,A1 - a,b,a,B1 - b,a,b,A2 - a,b,a,B2 - b,a,b,a,(A1). However, when you have just started learning how to write Rondeau, it is always better that you try the simpler forms of this poetic style before you have a go at this more complex type.
An example of a simple Rondeau by the poet Leigh Hunt can be viewed here.
And another one by John McCrae can be read here.
Published by Sebastian Donner
Sebastian Donner is currently a full time educator. He has been teaching for nearly a decade and enjoys exploring new avenues of instruction. He also loves being an active dad with his three children and coo... View profile
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In the days when minstrels worked the streets, they were often bought to functions such as a royal feast, and preformed in front of the royalty, adlibing rhyme about things such as how beautiful the queen or princess was or how gallant the royal knights were and maybe if they were confident enough and possessed enough talent sang about the king, it is noted that should the king be offended by the song the minstrel might be thrown in the dungeon to ruminate on his choice of words. minstrels produced marvelous songs and poetry but it was never written down so they received no accolades, and their work was lost . Jimbo
poetry is an art form the origins of which are lost in time.
a poet was in the olden days usually a person such as a minstrel and they rhymed current events into folk music and their works flowed from their brain like water from a tap and they sang and rhymed adlib this is in it's self a talent worthy of modern recognition, but alas today the art form has mostly been lost and words like I have just written are called poetry, when they really are just words without rhythm , meter, or flow. meter being the constant, flow being the continuance of the story theme and rhyme provides the work with it's pleasure to the ear as the human brain follows the poem. a poem must tell a story or it is just words. Jimbo
Well done, though it seems mis-categorized. Reads more like a "How To" than it does like "Creative Writing/" Do you think?
I've never heard of the Rondeau. Thanks for posting.
I think all the rules and regulations of "old" poetry is what drove most modern poets to free verse.
Thanks for the instructions. This looks like a fun form to play with. As one of my teachers used to remind me, creativity is born out of having limits.
Thanks a lot for this explanation! I always love discovering new forms. Personally, I'm a big fan of the Villanelle, another close cousin of the Triolet. The Rondeau sounds interesting, but might be a little lengthy and technical for my level of expertise.