enjambement

noun en-JAHM-beh-men Rare

Origin: French: 'enjamber' (to stride over)

Usage Note

Enjambement is a French-origin technical term used in Italian literary criticism (critica letteraria) to describe a poetic line that runs on into the next without a syntactic pause. It is adopted unchanged into Italian and used in masculine form (l'enjambement). The practice is common in Italian poetry from Dante onward.

Examples

"L'enjambement crea tensione nel verso."

Natural Translation

Enjambement creates tension in the verse.

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