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rondel
poetry
Also known as: rondelle
- Also spelled:
- rondelle
rondel, a fixed poetic form that runs on two rhymes. It is a variant of the rondeau.
The rondel often consists of 14 lines of 8 or 10 syllables divided into three stanzas (two quatrains and a sextet), with the first two lines of the first stanza serving as the refrain of the second and third stanzas. In some instances rondels are 13 lines long, with only the first line of the poem repeated at the end. The designation rondel is sometimes used interchangeably with rondeau. The form, which originated in 13th-century France, was later used by such English-language poets as Edmund Gosse, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Ernest Henley.