Citation and allusion in the late Ars nova: The case of Esperance and the En attendant songs

1999 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 287-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yolanda Plumley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Guillaume De Machaut ◽  
Ars Nova ◽  
The Many

In his Prologue, Guillaume de Machaut lists the ballade entée, or ‘grafted ballade’, as one of the many genres he is inspired to write to praise and honour all ladies. It is unclear from this fleeting reference, however, exactly what type of work Machaut meant by this term and whether he was referring to a purely poetic form or to one that involved music. That the practice of citation in lyric poetry was well established at this time is demonstrated by Machaut's own output, which reveals him to have been a master of this art; this literary tradition was to continue to thrive in the later fourteenth century.

Hockets as Compositional and Scribal Practice in the ars nova Motet—A Letter from Lady Music

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zayaruznaya
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Guillaume De Machaut ◽  
Ars Nova ◽  
French Composers ◽  
Epistolary Exchange ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Compositional Approaches ◽  
Insight Into

The whimsical upper-voice texts of the anonymous fourteenth-century motet Musicalis/Sciencie stage an epistolary exchange between Rhetoric, Music, and a long list of French composers and singers. The letters complain that these musicians, whose ranks include Guillaume de Machaut and Philippe de Vitry, split words with rests when they write hockets. The critical tone of Musicalis/Sciencie implies that some ars nova composers must have regularly split words with hockets, while others—the motet’s composer, for one—held this to be bad practice. But since modern editions and medieval scribes alike are imprecise in the placement of text around hockets, the existence of such opposing camps seems difficult to substantiate. An analysis of text-note alignment in four sources for Apta/Flos reveals that some scribes were prescriptive in their texting of hockets, while others, like the scribe of the important Ivrea codex, were pragmatic. An awareness of these differences can lead to alternate modes of interpreting ambiguous text underlay. In the case of Philippe de Vitry’s Petre/Lugentium, shifting syllables adjacent to hockets can transform the work, highlighting carefully differentiated textural zones that are key to its structure. Such editorial intervention can in turn yield fresh insight into competing compositional approaches.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

Some Thoughts About Genre in Old Javanese Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Work

Robson in 1983 and 1988 in his reconsideration of the poetics of kakawin epics and Javanese philology drew readers’ attention to the importance of genre for the history of ancient Javanese literature. Aoyama in his study of the kakawin Sutasoma in 1992, making judicious use of Hans Jauss’s concept of “horizon of expectation”, offered the first systematic discussion of the genre of Old Javanese literary works. The present essay offers a commentary on the terms which mpu Monaguna and mpu Prapañca, authors of the thirteenth century epic kakawin Sumanasāntaka and the fourteenth century Deśawarṇana, themselves, employ to refer to the generic characteristics of their poems. Mpu Monaguna referred to his epic poem as a narrative work (kathā), written in a prakṛt, Old Javanese, and rendered in the poetic form of a kakawin and finally as a ritual act intended to enable the poet to achieve apotheosis with his tutelary deity and his poem to be the means of transforming the world, in particular to ensure the wellbeing of the readers, listeners, copyists and those who possessed copies of his poetic work. Mpu Prapañca described his Deśawarṇana differently. Also written in Old Javanese and in the poetic form of a kakawin—he refers to his work variously as a narrative work (kathā), a chronicle (śakakāla or śakābda), a praise poem (kastawan) and also as a ritual act designed to enable the author in an ecstatic state of rapture (alangö), and filled with the power and omniscience of his tutelary deity, to ensure the continued prosperity of the realm of Majapahit and to secure the rule of his king Rājasanagara. The essay considers each of these literary categories.

Surviving Desire: Reading Ḥāfiz̤ in Colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Ali Altaf Mian
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
The World ◽  
Mystical Theology

Abstract This article contributes to scholarship on Muslim humanities, Islam in modern South Asia, and the Urdu literary tradition in colonial India. It does so by contextualizing and closely reading Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī’s (1863–1943) commentary on the Dīvān of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Ḥāfiz̤. Unlike his modernist contemporaries, Ashraf ʿAlī does not read Ḥāfiz̤ through the prisms of social reform or anti-colonial nationalist struggle. Rather, in his capacity as a Sufi master, he approaches Ḥāfiz̤’s Dīvān as a mystical text in order to generate insights through which he counsels his disciples. He uses the commentary genre to explore Sufi themes such as consolation, contraction, annihilation, subsistence, and the master-disciple relational dynamic. His engagement with Ḥāfiz̤’s ġhazals enables him to elaborate a practical mystical theology and to eroticize normative devotional rituals. Yet the affirmation of an analogical correspondence between sensual and divine love on the part of Ashraf ʿAlī also implies the survival of Ḥāfiz̤’s emphases on the disposability of the world and intoxicated longing for the beloved despite the demands of colonial modernity.

scholarly journals The Role of Michaś Skobla in the Belarusian Literary Process

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-91
Author(s):  
Arnold McMillin
Keyword(s):  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Lyric Poet ◽  
The Many

Abstract The many-sided work of Michaś Skobla (b. 1966) takes a variety of forms, including that of prose writer, critic, editor, anthologist, parodist, translator, radio correspondent and lyric poet. The article aims to outline the main features of his writing, with particular emphasis on his parodies and lyric poetry, in this way showing his central role in the Belarusian literary process of today.

Een nieuw fragment van handschrift A van de Roman der Lorreinen (Michigan State University, Criminology Collection, XX KJC7690.A48 1687)

2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-121
Author(s):  
Remco Sleiderink ◽  
Ben van der Have
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Michigan State University ◽  
State University ◽  
Chanson De Geste ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Binding Material ◽  
The Many

Abstract Among the many books in Michigan State University’s Criminology Collection is a Corpus juris militaris, published in Germany in 1687. Its binding contains four small parchment strips with medieval Dutch verses. Although the strips are still attached in the spine, the verses can be identified as belonging to the Roman der Lorreinen, and more specifically as remnants of manuscript A, written in the duchy of Brabant in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Manuscript A originally must have consisted of over 400 leaves, containing more than 150.000 verses (note: there are no complete manuscripts of the Roman der Lorreinen). Only 7% of manuscript A has been preserved in several European libraries, mainly in Germany. The new fragment suggests that manuscript A was used as binding material not earlier than the end of the seventeenth century (after 1687). The newly found verses are from the first part of the Roman der Lorreinen, which was an adaptation of the Old French chanson de geste Garin le Loherenc. This article offers a first edition and study of the verses, comparing them to the Old French counterparts. This comparison offers additional evidence for the earlier hypothesis that manuscript A contained the same adaptation of Garin le Loherenc as the fragmentary manuscripts B and C.

Mozarabic preces in Ars Nova notation: a new fourteenth-century fragment discovered in Spain

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CATALUNYA ◽  
CARMEN JULIA GUTIÉRREZ
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Digital Restoration ◽  
Ars Nova

ABSTRACTThis article reports the discovery of an early fourteenth-century manuscript fragment (two small snippets from the same folio) of Castilian origin. One side of the original folio contained a monophonic piece in Ars Nova notation whose text has been identified as Mozarabic preces, a musical repertoire that was suposed to lack written transmission from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. The fragment thus throws new light on the survival of the Mozarabic rite through the late Middle Ages. The backside of the folio contains music written in an old mensural system based on undifferentiated semibreves and puncta divisionis. In this regard, the manuscript may represent the earliest known Spanish source to employ the Petronian system described in the mensural treatise in Barcelona Cathedral (misc. 23). The study includes a detailed codicological examination of the manuscript (including the digital restoration of a palimpsest), transcriptions and musical analysis.

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