{{italic title}} thumb|Cover of the book ''Libro de los cincuenta romances'' (c. 1525), first known collection of ''romances''. The '''''romance''''' (the term is Spanish, and is pronounced accordingly: {{IPA|es|roˈmanθe}}) is a metrical form used in Spanish poetry.<ref name=Laurer>A. Robert Lauer, [http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/METRIFICATION.html Spanish Metrification] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100620031251/http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/METRIFICATION.html |date=2010-06-20 }}, University of Oklahoma. Accessed online 2010-02-10.</ref> It consists of an indefinite series (''tirada'') of verses, in which the even-numbered lines have a near-rhyme (assonance) and the odd lines are unrhymed.<ref name=Laurer /><ref name="Rodríguez-Fischer">Ana Rodríguez-Fischer, ''Prosa española de vanguardia'', Volume 249 of Clásicos Castalia, Editorial Castalia, 1999. {{ISBN|84-7039-834-2}}. p. 92''n''. [https://books.google.com/books?id=TEzi8RAGUxYC&dq Available] on Google Books.</ref> The lines are octosyllabic (eight syllables to a line);<ref name=Laurer /><ref name=DRAE>[http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltObtenerHtml?LEMA=romance&SUPIND=0&CAREXT=10000&NEDIC=No Romance], Diccionario de la Lengua Española, Vigésima segunda edición, Real Academia Española. Accessed online 2010-02-10.</ref> a similar but far less common form is hexasyllabic (six syllables to a line) and is known in Spanish as '''''romancillo''''' (a diminutive of ''romance'');<ref name=Laurer /> that, or any other form of less than eight syllables may also be referred to as '''''romance corto''''' ("short romance").<ref name=DRAE/><ref>Rodríguez-Fischer p. 92''n'' gives ''romance corto'' and ''romancillo'' as synonyms for one another.</ref> A similar form in alexandrines (12 syllables) also exists, but was traditionally used in Spanish only for learned poetry (''mester de clerecía'').<ref name=Laurer />
Poems in the ''romance'' form may be as few as ten verses long, and may extend to over 1,000 verses. They may constitute either epics or erudite ''romances juglarescos'' (from the Spanish word whose modern meaning is "juggler"; compare the French ''jongleur'', which can also refer to a minstrel as well as a juggler). The epic forms trace back to the ''cantares de gesta'' (the Spanish equivalent of the French ''chansons de geste'') and the lyric forms to the Provençal ''pastorela''.
In the Spanish Golden Age, however, which is when the term came into wide use, ''romance'' was not understood to be a metrical form, but a type of narration, that could be written in various metrical forms. The first published collection of ''romances'', Martín Nucio's ''Cancionero de romances'' (about 1547), was, according to Nucio's prologue, published not as poetry, but as a collection of historical source materials. Despite a considerable amount of poetic theory and history published during that period, there is no reference to ''romance'' as a term of meter prior to the nineteenth century. It did not mean an 8-syllable meter.<ref>Daniel Eisenberg, “The Romance as Seen by Cervantes”, ''El Crotalón. Anuario de Filología Española'', tomo 1 (1984), pp. 177-192, https://web.archive.org/web/20150702023853/http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/cervantes/romance.pdf, retrieved August 4, 2015.</ref>
==Notes== {{reflist}}
Category:Spanish poetry