ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Canto is a unit of division or subsection found in epics or long narrative poetry. History of the Canto. The word “canto” comes from the Latin word cantus, meaning “song; bird-song; ” and by the 16th century, “canto” was used to define a section of a long poem.

Detailed explanation-2: -canto, major division of an epic or other long narrative poem. An Italian term, derived from the Latin cantus (“song”), it probably originally indicated a portion of a poem that could be sung or chanted by a minstrel at one sitting.

Detailed explanation-3: -cantos. Long books have chapters. Long poems do, too. But a chapter in a long poem is called a canto. There are several famous poems that are divided into cantos, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Byron’s Don Juan.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Difference Between Stanzas and Cantos While stanzas are also discrete units within a poem, they aren’t automatically the same as cantos. Stanzas tend to be shorter and can be used in poems of any length, while cantos demarcate longer sections within a narrative poem or epic.

Detailed explanation-5: -A canto is a subsection of a long narrative or epic poem. It is made up of at least five lines but it is normally much longer. These sections take the form or poetic chapters and allow the writer to divide a poem into easier to read and comprehend sections.