What interlocking rhyme scheme is used throughout The Divine Comedy?

The Divine Comedy uses terza rima throughout its original Italian verse.

Dante developed this form from linked tercets, or three-line stanzas. A typical sequence is ABA BCB CDC: the middle rhyme of one tercet becomes the outer rhyme of the next. This creates a continuous chain that carries the reader forward through the poem's journey from Inferno to Purgatorio and Paradiso.

The lines are generally hendecasyllables, meaning each has eleven syllables in Italian. Terza rima is therefore both a rhyme pattern and part of the poem's distinctive metrical design. Its repeated groups of three also fit the Comedy's strong symbolism of the Trinity, though scholars debate how deliberately every structural detail was planned.

A common mix-up is blank verse, which is unrhymed poetry and appears in some English translations. Ottava rima is another Italian stanza form, but it uses eight-line stanzas and is not the form Dante chose for the Comedy.