Rhyming Schemes
In many languages, including modern European languages and Arabic, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnet, and rhyming couples. However, the use of structural rhyme is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes.
Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme entered European Poetry in the High Middle Ages in part under the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus ( modern Spain ). Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively from the first development of literary Arabic in the sixth century as in their long rhyming Qasidas.
Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across language, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry consistency and well-defined rhyming schemes, such as the chant royal or the Rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have the variable rhyme scheme.
Most rhymes scheme are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line does not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an "a-a-b-a" rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat forms.
Similarly, an "a-b-b-a" quatrain (what is known as "enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet. Some type of more complicated rhyming schemes has developed names of their own, separate forms the "a-b-c" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima.
Ottava rima
Ottava rima is a rhyming scheme using a stanza of eight lines with an alternating a-b rhyming scheme for the first six lines followed by a closing couplet. First used by Boccaccio, it was developed for heroic epics but has also used for mock-heroic poetry
Terza rima
Dante's Divine Comedy is written in terza rima where each stanza has three lines, with the first and third rhyming, and the second lines rhyming with the first and third lines of the next stanza ( thus a-b-a / b-c-b / c-d-c, etcetera ) in A chain rhyme.
The terza rima provides a flowing, progressive sense to the poem, and used skillfully it can evoke a sense of motion, both forward and backward. Terza rima is appropriately used in lengthy poems in languages with rich rhyming structures.
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