Dear Janet
I agree that the rhymes in Cecco Angiolieri’s poem are emphatic, but I am not sure the reason for this lies quite where you seem to imply.
The lines here are endecasillabi (which stand to other Italian metres in rather the same relationship as IP does to other metres in English). Allowing for elisions, the key points in the line are the location of a natural stress on the tenth syllable and, commonly, a secondary stress on the fourth or sixth. Despite its name, however, the line may have more or fewer than eleven syllables. For instance, if the final word has its stress on the antepenultimate syllable (which must fall at the tenth position) the line would have twelve syllables, though this would perhaps be unusual in poems of this date. Ten-syllable endecasillabi also occur. As to rhyme, traditionally Italian rhymes are full (though exceptions can be found), rhyming all the syllables of a word from the last stressed syllable of the word to the word-end.
It seems to me that the pattern of rhyme and metre in “S' i' fosse foco” is conventional. I suggest, therefore, that the weight which falls on the rhymes has a different source – the repetitive structure of nine of the fourteen lines (a species of the rhetorical figure anaphora) and the fact that all these lines (and others) are strongly end-stopped. Furthermore, this pattern, which is also a pattern of syntax, with one exception throws emphatic weight on to the fourth syllable in these lines and therefore on to the important content words that are placed in that position (“foco” and “vento”, for instance).
What an angry poem this is! But so are the few other poems by this author which I have read. I’m not sure I quite think of this as humorous or satirical, however. Thanks to Andrew for posting it, however!
Kind regards
Clive Watkins
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