Old Saxon poetry Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...

Old English poetry Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work ''Cædmon ...

, and

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

poetry, the term ''fit(t)'' ( oe, fitt, Middle English ''fit(t)(e)'', ''fyt(t)(e)'', Old Saxon ''*fittia'') was used to denote a section (or

canto The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...

) of a long narrative poem, and the term (spelled both as ''fitt'' and ''fit'') is still used in modern scholarship to refer to these (though in Old and Middle English the term seems actually to have been used more often to mean 'poem, song'). The term appears in the Latin preface to the

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...

Heliand The ''Heliand'' () is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means ''saviour'' in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch ''Heiland'' meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the ...

'' in the form ''vitteas'', and its usage in line 709 of

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...

's ''

Tale of Sir Thopas Sir Thopas is one of '' The Canterbury Tales'' by Geoffrey Chaucer, published in 1387. The tale is one of two—together with The Tale of Melibee—told by the fictive Geoffrey Chaucer as he travels with the pilgrims on the journey to Canterbury ...

'' has attracted particular commentary, since here the poem's narrator (a fictionalised representation of Geoffrey Chaucer himself) comments explicitly on arriving at a fitt-division in the poem he is reciting.E. A. Jones,
"Loo, Lordes Myne, Heere Is a Fit!": The Structure of Chaucer's ''Sir Thopas''
, ''The Review of English Studies'', new series, vol. 51, no. 202 (May, 2000), 248-52.

References

{{reflist Poetic devices Medieval poetry Early Germanic literature