Le Laborintus d’Évrard l’Allemand, ou le roman familial d’un grammairien mélancolique

Among the six ‘poetic arts’ edited and commented by Faral in 1924, Evrard l’Allemand’s Laborintus is undoubtedly the one that, since then, has known the most mediocre fortune. It is the only one that has never been re-edited or translated. This paper proposes a new analysis of this poem trying to question the reasons of this absence. Did Laborintus, which was rather known in the Germanic countries during the last centuries of the Middle Ages, suffer from the banality linked to its doctrine whose success would outshine it? Or, rather, did it suffer from the originality of its character, as we can see from the autobiographic development of its first part and the enigmatic character of its title? In the light of such questions, this paper will deal with Laborintus’ relation with other poetic arts, namely Horace’s and Geoffroy de Vinsauf’s.

The Ars versificaria of Gervase of Melkley

Gervase of Melkley, a younger contemporary of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, writes his De arte versificatoria et modo dictandi at the peak of a revisionary movement that places the discussions of figures and tropes inherited from classical and medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions in new contexts, creating what we now call the Arts of Poetry and Prose. Gervase’s art draws upon the works of Matthew of Vendome, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and Bernardus Silvestris for its doctrine and its examples. But how often does Gervase refer to these writers? How does he use their arts in his art? When does he borrow from them? What doctrine and which examples does he borrow? Does he cite his references and, if so, what are his citation practices? This chapter surveys Gervase’s borrowings from the works of Matthew, Geoffrey, and Bernardus by way of a review of the Index nominum and Index scriptorium of Hans Jurgen Graebener’s modern edition of the De arte versificatoria. The review locates Gervase’s borrowings of doctrine and examples with greater precision, and corrects errors in the indices as needed. Charting the precise citation practices of Gervase clarifies the meaning of his hierarchy of the three writers, places his long supposed use of the Poetria nova in serious doubt, and reopens the question of his art’s date.

Il commento di Bartolomeo da San Concordio alla Poetria nova: alcuni appunti

This paper proposes an excerpt of Bartolomeo da San Concordio’s commentary on the Poetria nova (vv. 1-263) on the basis of the two manuscripts that bequeath the work: the Casanatense 311 and the ms. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, Osborn fa.6; the first one contains the exegetic text in its entirety, whereas the latter only the initial part. In this paper, the distinctive features of the commentary and the sources used by Bartolomeo are exposed. The potential similarities and relations with other ‘Italian’ coeval commentators of the Poetria nova – especially Guizzardo da Bologna – are examined in order to better define the cultural context in which Goffredo’s work was read and commented between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries in Italy.

Tratamiento del ordo en la teorización poética medieval

Although medieval artes poetriae authors, because of their grammatical and versificatory orientation and the importance they attributed to elocutio, paid less attention to the parts of speech than the attention paid by authors of artes praedicandi or artes dictaminis, however, they did not neglect the dispositive aspects of literary discourse, and strengthened the textual character that began to dominate in Poetics under the dominance of Rhetoric. Although dispositio was not a part of grammar instruction in the XIII century – heir to the grammatical concept of Quintilian –, nevertheless, as a result of the rhetoricalisation process undergone by medieval poetry, other medieval artes poetriae, following in the footsteps of Horace’s Ars poetica, paid great attention to the operative organisation of literary text. Despite the familiarity with classical rhetorical treatises, when medieval poetry scholars dealt with the various ways to start a poem, they did not make use of these sources, as these were written having the forensic oratory as a model, and concentrated their study on techniques that make the defence of legal causes effective, developing the doctrine of exordium to present the case to the receiver and get the favourable disposition of the auditorium. We will pay attention to the sources of artes poetriae in the binomial ordo naturalis/ordo artificialis doctrine and we will analyse the consolidation that textual construction receives in Poetria nova. In this work Geoffrey of Vinsauf provides an extensive treatment on dispositio and the procedures to move from the objective and actual order, which follows the road of nature – ordo naturalis – to the poetic order – ordo artificialis. This distinction will have a great influence on the structure of narrative material. This study provides interesting data about the importance of the structure of literary texts in medieval times and provides a solid theoretical framework to understand the structure of the literary text and thus of textual linguistics.

Translatio Poetriae

The Occitan treatises on the art of poetry are among the earliest vernacular arts of poetry. However, they adapt the pedagogy of the classroom implicit in Latin treatises like the Poetria nova to the court milieu beginning in the thirteenth century. This paper illustrates this development by comparing the new vernacular art with the Latin art found in Geoffrey’s treatise and commentaries on it as well as in other treatises written and commented on in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries and beyond. The Occitan treatises were written for laymen; although ignorant of Latin, they wished to write in the style of the early troubadours but with adaptations to the new subject matters of fin’amors. Key documents include the different versions of Guilhem Molinier’s Leys d’Amors written for the Toulouse consistory as well as some Catalan courts. An important feature of this emerging vernacular art is the imitation and emulation of recognised masterpieces of the art, including the ‘ancient troubadours’ and some Latin pieces, as the vernacular art evolved under supervision of the Inquisition. These changes are evident in the works of model poets such as N’At de Mons and Ramon de Cornet on whom I focus in this paper. Latin pedagogy is evident in the Occitan treatises these authors exemplify, but with adaptations to the new vernacular. The troubadour influence went north to some French courts and beyond. The role of intermediaries that link different vernaculars will be briefly noted in conclusion, a rayonnement not unlike that identified in Woods’ study on the diffusion in Europe of the Poetria nova and commentary on it.

Between Grammar and Rhetoric

This paper examines the context of Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova and of its manuscripts and commentaries in medieval and Renaissance Italy. It is well known that, in Italy, grammar (Latin language and literature) was the concern of elementary and mainly secondary schools, whereas rhetoric was primarily a university subject (although basic introductory rhetoric also figured at the end of the secondary-school curriculum). There is little direct (and scant indirect) indication that Poetria nova was taught in Italian universities, but abundant evidence that it was used in schools. Such a school (as opposed to university) context suggests that Poetria nova was primarily used in teaching grammar, not rhetoric, in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The most important use of the text was teaching prose composition: how to vary sentences beyond the simplest wording and structure of subject-verb-predicate (suppositum-appositum) initially learned by grammar pupils, i.e. moving from ordo naturalis to ordo artificialis. Marjorie Curry Woods has written, «although there is growing evidence that the Poetria nova was used to teach the composition of prose, and especially, letters, throughout Europe, it is almost always copied with verse texts, often classical works, in Italian manuscripts, which suggests that it was also used there to teach the interpretation of literary texts». But there is little sign that Geoffrey of Vinsauf was cited in Italian literary manuscripts during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: in my study of manuscript schoolbooks preserved in Florentine libraries, there are 98 in which authorities are explicitly cited. Vergil tops the list, cited in 35 manuscripts, followed by Cicero (and ps. Cicero) in 32, Ovid in 29, Seneca (and ps. Seneca) in 27, Lucan in 16, Valerius Maximus in 15, Aristotle (and ps. Aristotle) in 14, Horace in 13, and so on. In contrast Geoffrey of Vinsauf was cited by name in only one manuscript.

La construcción retórica de los discursos en el Laborintus de Everardo el Alemán

Eberhard the German’s Laborintus is one of the artes poetriae that has been influenced by Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s Poetria nova. In line with Greoffrey de Vinsauf’s teaching on prosopopoeia, i.e. one of the most important figures that an author must use, in the first 252 lines of his Laborintus Eberhard the German introduces at least four discourses in which Nature, Fate/Fortune, Philosophy and Grammar expose and argue their importance in man’s life. The analysis of both the reasons and actions and the form in which they are exposed (elocution) contains the author’s vision of the universe and opposes positive and negative things (res), which are represented by rhetorical elements such as docere, commovere and persuadere. Such elements can define the essential role the knowledge of grammar, rhetoric and philosophy plays in the education and salvation of men.

L’impronta di Matteo di Vendôme nella diffusione degli schemi di correlazione e pluralità (sec. XI-XVI)

Matteo of Vendôme’s Ars versificatoria is the volume that, more than any other, lets us identify in the troubadours’ vocabulary some recurring features regarding morpho-stylistics and rhyming. Moreover, the Ars versificatoria is the well-known archetype of two stylistic features that are crucial in authors of trobar clus (especially Raimbaut d’Aurenga and Arnaut Daniel), who hand them down to Petrarch and the European Petrarchism: the first one concerns the asyndeton (Versefüllendes Asyndeton) that is usually employed in the ordo artificialis to mark the beginning of a poem; the latter regards the arrangement according to the rhetorical pattern called versus rapportati. As to the Poetria nova, it lets us clarify the meaning of some keywords of the troubadour poetry, especially those related to a technique that is usually (and anachronistically) interpreted in a symbolic way, but which actually derives from rules and notions coming from the school of Chartres and elaborated by Geoffrey of Vinsauf. This paper can be viewed as a chance to gather and re-examine many ideas collected in some of the Author’s publications.

Nova quaedam insita mirifice transsumptio

This paper aims to study figurative language in the artes poetriae and its probable influence on Dante’s poetic theory and practice. First of all, I raise the issue of Dante’s education and its possible intersection with the manuscript tradition of artes poetriae; I then proceed to comment evidence of Dante’s acquaintance with these treatises. I especially focus on their development of a theory of transumptio and on their prescriptions concerning metaphors, similes and allegory. Finally, I briefly sketch the evolution of Dante’s theory of figurative language and show how it parallels his expanding metaphoric practice.