A
villanelle (also known as
villanesque) is a nineteen-line
poetic form consisting of five
tercets followed by a
quatrain. There are two
refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a
fixed verse form. The word derives from
Latin, then
Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the
pastoral.