En la cuarta parte de las Elegias de varones ilustres de Indias, Juan de Castellanos menciona la reiterada insistencia de Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada en cuanto a que la forma poetica mas apropiada para cantar las gestas de la conquista de las Indias eran los antiguos versos castellanos, por "ser hijos nacidos de su vientre", mientras que el Beneficiado de Tunja, por su parte, consideraba valido el uso de la entonces nueva metrica italiana, la
ottava rima, pues eran versos engendrados en nuestra lengua, al uso moderno, para renovar la memoria de los conquistadores (Historia del Nuevo Reino de Granada, canto XIII).
Besides the introduction, the critical apparatus includes extensive notes, which indicate poetic form (sonnet, madrigal, frottola-barzelletta or strambotto in
ottava rima), as well as thorough intratextual links within Gambara's oeuvre, allusions to authors, mythological references, and, if possible, dates of composition.
The volume also features an anastatic facsimile and a transcription, edited by Anne Tordi, of a 15th-century
ottava rima adaptation of Decameron 4.1, preserved in the Incunabula 469.5 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
The final two chapters deal with the interpenetration of sacre rappresentazioni,
ottava rima poetry and the engravings Baccio Baldini made in Florence some time in the early 1470s of images of twelve (two were added to the classical ten) sibyls that once famously decorated the palace of Cardinal Giordano Orsini in Rome (now lost).
Given the chronological movement of the volume, it ends somewhat anachronistically with another piece from Peter Cochran on the politicization of the Gothic in Byron's later satires, written in
ottava rima.
The concept of affordances (referring to different potentials for use) is applied to the stanzaic form in Edmund Spenser's "The faerie queene" (1590; 1596) and to the "
ottava rima" stanza, as exemplified by Kenneth Koch's postmodernist narrative poem, "Seasons on earth'(1960; 1977; 1987).
This chapter focuses on Marinella's first work, La colomba sacra, a hagiographic poem in
ottava rima that tells the story of the virgin-martyr Colomba, and the Vita del serafico, et glorioso San Francesco, also composed in
ottava rima.
The import of genre is most convincingly demonstrated in Vendler's chapter on Yeats's
ottava rima poems.
Jane Everson singles out Domenico Scolari's Istoria Alexandri Regis as an early example of a work in
ottava rima on classical themes, identifying its sources and characterizing it as transitional--in places appropriate for public recitation but elsewhere more suited to reading.
It is followed by two epic poems, "Ko, or A Season on Earth" and "The Duplications," which were written in the Italian form of
ottava rima. Using rhyme and meter in a contemporary epic poem would be enough to guarantee a relegation to the sidelines of popularity; throw in a wholly comedic narrative about a Japanese baseball player with an explosive pitch, as Koch did, and you're pretty much out of the game for good.
La traduccion de El Morgante permite a Byron una experiencia con la
ottava rima en sus primeros pasos (4).
Of the younger Byronists, Jane Stabler's detailed attention to the texture of Byon's allusive style works particularly effectively in an essay which draws out the Shandyean aspects of Mazeppa and usefully compares these to the modes of intertextuality in the
ottava rima verse.