Wilhelm Ténint (20 May 1817, Paris – 26 April 1879, Stockholm) was a minor French Romantic writer.
He was a fervent admirer of Victor Hugo and of the "modern school" of Romantic literature. He published in Parisian literary journals such as La Presse, and was a member of the Société des gens de lettres. In 1844, he published a handbook for and defense of Romantic prosody titled Prosodie de l'école moderne, which had a brief introduction by Hugo and a longer introduction by Emile Deschamps. Ténint's handbook mistakenly claimed that the unique, nonce structure of Jean Passerat's 1574 "Villanelle" was an old French form akin to terza rima; the poet Théodore de Banville subsequently "revived" this "Renaissance form," thus helping to create the modern 19-line poetic form called the villanelle. Ténint was placed under house arrest for pederasty in 1851 and thereafter left France for Sweden, where he translated Swedish works into French.
References
- French, Amanda (2004). Refrain, Again: The Return of the Villanelle (PDF). The University of Virginia. p. 46.
- Siegel, Patricia (1986). Wilhelm Ténint et sa Prosodie de l'école moderne. Geneve: Slatkine. ISBN 978-2-05-100753-5.