Canto

Canto poetry

So why are cantos used in poetry?

Since cantos are primarily used for narrative poems, they break the plot of a poem into several plot points or sub-plots. Therefore, each canto should ideally have its own beginning, middle and end. That way, individual cantos can either aid the reader's understanding of the poem as a whole or exist as a standalone piece with its own storyline and theme.

This format makes longer poems more digestible for the reader, who can choose to enjoy individual subsections of a long poem instead of trying to wrap their mind around an unbroken body of text with never-ending rhymes and meters.

The break at the end of each canto gives the reader a chance to stop, reflect and appreciate everything they have just read.

Dante's Divine Comedy (1320) consists of 14,233 lines in total. Imagine reading that as a continuously rolling body of text! Well, Dante Alighieri makes use of cantos to help break up what could have been an extremely tedious and dense read. First, he divided the poem into three chapters - Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso - detailing Dante's journey in every stage of the afterlife. Each chapter is further broken down into 33 cantos and one additional introductory canto. This makes the poem more bite-sized and easy on the eyes.

Fig. 2 - Illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy (1320) by William Blake

Not only are cantos helpful for those who are reading the poem, but also for poets writing it. Breaking the poem into smaller subsections allows the poet to focus on enhancing each individual part. This is because poets need to focus on making each canto self-contained and understandable as an isolated piece. This improves the overall impact of the poem.

Cantos also make it more convenient to change the rhyme scheme or meter of the poem while moving from one canto to another, rather than randomly switching a poem's format and style mid-poem. A canto also allows the poet to include narrative devices such as cliffhangers, which can help build anticipation and excitement.

Canto vs stanza

A canto serves the same purpose as that of a stanza. They both break up long bodies of poetry into smaller comprehensible units.

Stanza: A division of poetry that breaks a poem into separate units of two or more lines each.

Additionally, stanzas can be used for poems of any length. Cantos are usually reserved for longer epic poems or narrative poems.

A canto can consist of multiple stanzas or can exist as one long stanza.

Canto examples

Here are a few famous examples of literary works that make use of cantos.

Inferno (1320) by Dante Alighieri

Although cantos had been used before, Dante Alighieri was the first poet to use the term 'canto' to describe the subsections of his Divine Comedy (1320).

Inferno is the first of Dante's three-chapter epic poem. In this chapter, Dante goes through the circles of hell and meets several sinners undergoing punishment, ultimately ending with him finding Satan.

Let's take a look at the first four stanzas of Canto I from Inferno that introduce the characters and setting of the poem.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

Canto I has 46 stanzas in total, out of which 45 are tercets, and one is a monostich.

Tercets: A three-lined stanza

The Faerie Queene (1590) by Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was the first English poet to use cantos as a divisive unit in The Faerie Queene (1590). The Faerie Queene is one of the longest epic poems written in English, with over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas. The entire poem is spread out across six volumes, each of which details the adventures of knights with different virtues.

Here is the first stanza of Canto I, Volume 1.

Fig. 3 - An illustration from The Faerie Queen published in 1859

The Cantos (1925) by Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound's unfinished poem The Cantos consists of 116 cantos which include historical references, myths and languages from many different parts of the world. The cantos are long, with an irregular number of stanzas of varying lengths.

These are the first few lines of Canto I