Abstract This article addresses the spread of the terza rima poetic form (three-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc and so on) in France during the first half of the sixteenth century. It analyses the formal characteristics of all known poems written in this Italian-inspired form, as well as the poets’ ways of categorizing and interpreting them. The study ascertains the factors that attracted poets to terza rima and what its scarce fortune can reveal about evolving literary practices in early modern France and Europe.
Luca Sanseverino (Sat,) studied this question.