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Bref Double
A mysterious French poetic form. Read this story for free here.
I say mysterious because I couldn’t find out how old the art form was. I will keep looking but for now, this is the knowledge I have gained.
What is a BREF Double ?
It is a fourteen-line French Poetic form. The rules are a little complicated, as they are with many French forms.
It consists of three isosyllabic quatrains and a couplet, all isosyllabic. There are three rhymes in this poem: a, b, and c. There are five lines that don’t follow the rhyme system. Each quatrain concludes with a c rhyme. The a and b rhymes appear twice in each of the three quatrains, as well as once in the couplet.
The Bref Double is a quatorzain that doesn’t pretend to be a sonnet, maybe the Bref Double is supposed to be a narrative rather than a poetic or lyrical verse. Turco’s The Book of Forms describes it as lyrical and French in origin, but I’m stumped as to gathering more historical information regarding the art form.
