TRIOLET

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 287 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TOO-TUM

TRIOLET , one of the fixed forms of verse invented in medieval France, and preserved in the practice of many modern literatures. It consists of eight short lines on two rhymes, arranged a b a a a b a b, and in French usually begins on the masculine rhyme. The first line reappears as the fourth line, and the seventh and eighth lines repeat the opening couplet; the first line, therefore, is repeated three times, and hence the name. No more typical specimen of the triolet could be found than the following, by Jacques Ranchin (c. 169o):
" Le premier jour du mois de ,mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie: Le beau dessein que je formais, Le premier jour du mois de mai Je

vous

VOUS

vis et je

vous

VOUS

aimais.
Si ce dessein vous plut, Sylvie, Le premier jour du mois de mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie."
This poem was styled by Menage " the king of triolets." The

great

GREAT

art of the triolet consists in using the refrain-line with such naturalness and ease that it should seem inevitable, and yet in each repetition slightly altering its meaning, or at least its relation to the rest of the poem. The triolet seems to have been invented in the 13th century. The earliest example known occurs in the Cleomadis of Adenez-le-Roi
(1258-1297). The medieval triolet was usually written in lines of ten syllables, and the lightness of

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

in the modern specimens was unknown to these perfectly serious examples. One of the best-known is that of Froissart, " Mon cceur s'ebat en odorant la rose." The rules are laid down in the Art et Science de Rhethorique (1493) of Henry de Croi, who quotes a triolet written in words of one syllable. According .to Sarrasin, who introduces the triolet as a mourner in his Pompe June/ire de Voiture, it was that writer who " remis en vogue " the ancient precise forms of verse, " par ses balades, ses trio-lets et ses rondeaux, qui par sa mort (1648) retournaient clans leur ancien decri." Boileau threw scorn upon the delicate art of these pieces, and mocked the memory of Clement Marot because he " tourna des triolets," but

Marmontel

MARMONTEL, JEAN FRANCOIS (1723-1799)

recognized the neatness and charm of the form. They continued to be written in France, but not by poets of much pretension, until the middle of the 19th century, when there was a

great

GREAT

revival of their use.
The earliest triolets in English are those of a devotional nature composed in 1651 by Patrick Carey, a

Benedictine

BENEDICTINE

monk at Douai, where he probably had become acquainted with what Voiture had made a fashionable French pastime. In modern times, the triolet was re-introduced into English by Robert Bridges, in 1873, with his
" When first we met, we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master;
Of more than common friendliness
When first we met we did not guess.
Who could foretell the sore distress,
This irretrievable disaster,
When first we met ?we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master."
Since then the triolet has been cultivated very widely in English, most successfully by Austin

Dobson

DOBSON, HENRY AUSTIN (184o- )
DOBSON, WILLIAM (16ro-1646)

, whose " Rose kissed me to-day," " I intended an Ode " and " In the School of Coquettes " are masterpieces of ingenuity and easy grace. In later French literature, triolets are innumerable; perhaps the most graceful cycle of them is " Les Prunes," attached by Alphonse Daudet to his Les Atnoureuses in 1858; and there are delightful examples by

Theodore

de Banville. In Germany the triolet has attracted much attention. Those which had been written before his day were collected by Friedrich Rassmann, in 1815 and 1817. But as early as 1795 an

anthology

ANTHOLOGY

of triolets had been published at Halberstadt, and another at Brunswick in 1796. Rassmann distinguished three species of triolet, the legitimate form (which has been described above), the loose triolet, which only approximately abides by the rules as to number of rhymes and lines, and single-strophe poems which more or less accidentally approach the true triolet in character. The true triolet was employed by W. Schlegel, Hagedorn, Ruckert, Platen and other romantic poets of the early 19th century. In many languages the triolet has come into very frequent use to give point and brightness to a brief stroke of satire; the French

newspapers

NEWSPAPERS

are full of examples of this. The triolet always, or at least since medieval times, has laboured under a suspicion of frivolity, and Rivarol, in 1788, found no more cutting thing to , say of Conjon de Bayeux than that he was " si recherche pour le triolet." But in the hands of a genuine poet who desires to record and to repeat a mood of graceful reverie or pathetic humour, the triolet possesses a very delicate charm.
See Friedrich Rassmann, Sammlung triolettischer Spiele (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1817). (E. G.)

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