Ottava rima is an Italian poetic form, tracing its roots back to the 15th century and before. For the study of Frere, there is one salient use of this poetic form: Morgante Maggiore. This lyric-epic poem was written by the poet Luigi Pulci, a Florentine poet of the 15th century, who employed the older form of ottava rima in this work. Pulci's unique contribution to the poetic field was not in the use of ottava rima; rather it was in his Florentine voice, which was unrestrainable, energetic, critical, and even flippant (Waller 8). His topic was (of course) the ever popular knight culture, into which he interjected his Florentine voice. That voice is especially visible through Orlando (the knight-hero of the tale) and his adventure where he converts a giant (the traditional foe of the knight, who is usually irredeemable) to Christianity and takes the giant as his squire. This styling is very original, and its unusual treatment would later be observed by Frere in his studies of the Italian poets. Frere would later employ both the tone and rhyme scheme of this work in his own work The Monks and the Giants. In Frere's work the rhyme scheme is laid out in an eight line form, ab-ab-ab-cc.
The information for this summary was taken from R. D. Waller's preface to the 1926 reprinting of The Monks and the Giants.
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