THE Stanza
( Prepared by S. Sreekumar)
THE Stanza
“The poetry of a people does not begin
with the line but with the stanza, not with metre but with music”.
Wilhelm Meyer, the German novelist, and
playwright.
‘Stanza’ is first recorded in English at the
end of the 16th century, borrowed from Italian. A stanza is a well-defined
group of several lines of poetry having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme;
the scheme is usually repeated. In Italian, stanza means “a stopping place,
room (in a house), lodging, chamber, stanza (in poetry).” The Italian word
comes from Vulgar Latin ‘stantia’. (From Dictionary.com)
Prose compositions—essay, report, short story, or novel —
consist of paragraphs. All paragraphs in a composition point to the central
idea/theme. Each signals a new idea or
may denote a change in tone/approach. They provide a sense of direction to the
writer and the reader. They also relieve
the eye and provide much-needed rest when reading a lengthy composition.
