Medieval France. An Encyclopedia

then the rhyme is riche.
If the identity of sound extends to the vowel that precedes the tonic vowel and
includes all the following sounds

ressentir: repentir

acier: glacier

then the rhyme is called léonine (also double or superflue).
If the identity of sound extends farther back to include the consonant

félicité: férocité

utilité: tranquillité

then the rhyme is riche léonine.
Rhyme is divided into rimes masculines and féminines. Words that end in a mute e are
feminine and the rest are masculine. Masculine and feminine rhymes did not have to
alternate in medieval French poetry. A word could rhyme with itself and did not have to
have different meanings or derivations as in modern French poetry.
Rhymes that included homonyms

partira: part ira

à mordre: amordre

are called rimes équivoques.
Sequences of rhymes involving variations on the same word

avez: savez, savons: avons

are called rimes grammaticales and were frequent in Old French poetry.
In the 15th century and later, with the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, other rhyme forms were
much favored, such as rime batelée (the last word of a line rhymes with the word at the
caesura in the following line); rime renforcée (the caesura of a line rhymes with the end
of the line); rime brisée (words rhyme at the caesura); rime couronnée (the last syllable
of a line is repeated twice); rime emperière (a sound is repeated three times at the end of
a line); rime fratrisée or enchaînée (the last word of a line is repeated at the beginning of
the next line); rime entrelacée (part of the last word of a line is repeated in the next line);
rime annexée (the word at the end of a line has the same root as the word at the beginning
of the next line); rime retrograde (a series of words could be inverted word for word or
syllable for syllable); rime senée (all the words of each line begin with the same letter);
and rime en écho (the last word of a line is used alone as the following line).
The lyric strophe, or stanza, is formed by a fixed number of lines, rarely more than
fourteen. The more common strophes comprise two lines (the couplet or distiche); four
lines (the quatrain); six lines (the sixain); eight lines (the huitain); and ten lines (the
dixain). Some poems with fixed strophe forms, the formes fixes, that were popular in the

Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1794