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Canto. Detail of a 14th-century manuscript of Dante Alighieri's Commedia, a three-part poem ( Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) that was divided into 100 cantos. The canto ( Italian pronunciation: [ˈkanto]) is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. [1]
It was Edmund Spenser who first used the term “canto” in English. It is used in his epic, ‘The Faerie Queene’ which is now regarded as one of the finest pieces of English verse ever written. The cantos help to structure the poem, which is quite long, and allow the reader an easier way of reading it.
The word “canto” comes from the Latin word cantus, meaning “song; bird-song;” and by the 16th century, “canto” was used to define a section of a long poem. Cantos were first adopted by Italian poets such as Dante Alighieri, Matteo Boiardo, and Ludovico Ariosto, and was employed in English by Edmund Spenser to demarcate divisions in ...
May 17, 2024 · The antiquity and popularity of cantos in poetry can be traced back to ancient Greece, where odes were crafted by prominent lyric poets such as Pindar, Sappho and Archilochus. In later times, cantos were used by pioneers of the Renaissance such as Dante Alighieri, who wrote his famous Divine Comedy in the form of three cantos.
Definition of Canto. Canto is a subdivision or part in a narrative or epic poem, consisting of five or more lines such, as a stanza, which could also be a canto. The word “canto” originates from the Latin word cantus, which means “a song.”. The Italian poets Dante, Matteo Boiardo, and Ludovico used cantos to divide their poems into ...
A long subsection of an epic or long narrative poem, such as Dante Alighieri’s Commedia ( The Divine Comedy ), first employed in English by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene. Other examples include Lord Byron’s Don Juan and Ezra Pound’s Cantos .
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The word “canto” originates from the Latin word cantus, which means “a song.” The Italian poets Dante, Matteo Boiardo, and Ludovico used cantos to divide their poems into shorter sections for thematic understanding. In English literature, Edmund Spenser is the first poet who used this division in his famous poem “The Faerie Queene.”
