Portuguese Trova Verses

Portuguese Trovas: Counting Verses in Medieval Quatrains

The Portuguese trova is a quatrain, a stanza built from four heptasyllabic verses (redondilha maior, seven metric syllables) rhyming ABAB. Counting the verses is just total = trovas × 4. So 15 trovas come to 15 × 4 = 60 verses, while a collection of 100 trovas runs to 400.

Its roots run back to the medieval cantigas trovadorescas of the 13th and 14th centuries. Among those are works by D. Dinis (king-poet, 1261-1325) and Martim Codax, whose seven Cantigas de Amigo count among the oldest Iberian lyric pieces that survive. Luís de Camões (16th c.) worked the form into his lyric poetry, and Fernando Pessoa gave it a whole book, Quadras ao Gosto Popular, published after his death. You still find the trova in popular almanacs, in folk singing, and in the quadras populares sung at São João festivities.

Applications

Handy for poets writing trovas for contests (the Concurso de Trovas runs in both Portugal and Brazil), for literature students reading medieval Iberian lyric, for almanac editors sizing up how much content to commission, and for teachers explaining poetic meter and rhyme in lusophone classrooms.

FAQ

What is redondilha maior? A heptasyllabic verse (7 metric syllables). It's the most traditional meter of Portuguese popular poetry, as against the redondilha menor of 5 syllables.

Is "trova" the same as "quadra"? Both name four-verse stanzas. In practice "trova" points to the popular heptasyllabic ABAB form, whereas "quadra" is the wider term and will take other meters and rhyme schemes.

Who was Martim Codax? A 13th-century Galician-Portuguese troubadour from Vigo. His seven Cantigas de Amigo, kept in the Pergaminho Vindel, rank among the most celebrated medieval lyric texts of the Iberian Peninsula.