Home › Glossary › Letter V

Vilanelle

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A fixed 19-line French-derived form with five tercets and a quatrain, featuring two alternating refrains and only two end rhymes throughout.

Detailed Definition
A villanelle is a highly structured French-derived lyric form consisting of nineteen lines divided into five tercets followed by a concluding quatrain, employing only two rhymes throughout and featuring two refrains that alternate as the final lines of the tercets and then appear together in the closing stanza; this intricate repetition—exemplified in Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”—creates a hypnotic, obsessive quality that suits themes of grief, longing, or fixation, as the refrains accrue new shades of meaning with each recurrence, transforming constraint into emotional intensification.
Example
Example in poetry:
Vilanelle: "Do not go gentle into that good night... / Rage, rage against the dying of the light"; "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow... / I learn by going where I have to go"; "Mad Girl’s Love Song: ‘I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead’"; "If I could tell you: ‘Time will say nothing but I told you so’"
Additional Notes
Alternative spelling of villanelle. 19-line form with refrains. Five tercets plus quatrain. Famous examples: Bishop's "One Art," Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle."
Also Known As
nineteen-line form French form
Skip to main content