John of Garland's Parisiana Poetria and the Vernacular-Exemplar Turn Rebecca Hill Early Middle English, Volume 1, Number 2, 2019, pp. 83-91 (Article) Published by Arc Humanities Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/732814 [ Access provided at 2 Oct 2021 04:50 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] JOHN OF GARLAND’S PARISIANA POETRIA AND THE VERNACULAR-EXEMPLAR TURN REBECCA HILL decade of the twelfth century, departing from the tradition of gram- mars and rhetoric manuals,1 Matthew of Vendôme wrote Ars versificatoria, the in The last pedagogy. Around the year 1210, Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s wildly popular Poetria nova “art of the versifier,” and thus, unwittingly, ushered in a new genre of composition- sor, Matthew.2 ofexpanded metaphorical advice imageryon literary in andearly rhetorical Middle English technique verse worlds suggests beyond that his poets predeces writ- ing in Middle EnglishWhile Latin were poets employing were not the quick tropes to Geoffreyadopt his offered, methods, albeit the richnessas Latin Melkley’s Ars versificaria, dated after Poetria nova but before 1215, featuring an ana- examples in his metrical text. Geoffrey’s bravura was quickly followed by Gervase of Taken together, these three poetic guidebooks, and several smaller treatises, pre- sentedlytical, scientificincreasingly take descriptive on the concepts rather thatthan Geoffrey prescriptive presented perspectives with brilliant on poetry dash. in modern practice, an approach no doubt initiated by twelfth-century grammarians.3 About a decade and a half after Geoffrey and Gervase, John of Garland penned his elaborate and, at times, mystical Parisiana poetria de arte prosaica, metrica, et rithmica, composed around 1240, as established by Traugott Lawler.4 In Parisiana poetria, John cites his own poetic work alongside anonymous sources, by way of example. It is around this time that some of the earliest poems in Middle English appear, and some of them imprinted with suggestions from the earlier ars poetria. Of the ars poetria precedents. This paper rhetoricians, seeks to Johndevelop was a in methodology the unique positionby which to to have assess possibly John’s incorporationhad an influence of a from Middle Middle English English poetic poetry into Parisiana itself, rather poetria than, a sort exclusively of vernacular Latin 1 During the high Middle Ages, in addition to Cicero and Rhetorica ad Herennium, in abundant De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii and Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae. copies, we find Martianus Capella, 2 Geoffrey’s emphasis on metaphor and conceit rebelled against the scholastic and ecclesiastical guidelines of the church fathers of the twelfth century. The Victorines in particular were suspicious integumentum without a religious end; on the other hand, the School of Chartres was more lenient. readers of texts that required penetrating an 3 For example, Alexander of Villa-dieu, author of Doctrinale puerorum, instructed his students, Das Doctrinales des Alexander de Villa-dieu (Berlin: “debes servare moderno” [stick to the modern] (line 2295), even while firmly rooted in the late­ antique paradigms of Donatus and Priscian. 4 In his edition and translation, The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garland (New Haven: Yale Hofman, 1893), 153. University Press, 1974), xiii–xv. 84 rebecca hill - lish’s contribution to a more global—in this case, Latin—poetic. slipThe­stream, artes which poeticae could of Matthew,indicate one Geoffrey, of the and first Gervase demonstrations were preceded of Middle by LatinEng mnemonic grammars, such as Doctrinale puerorum which appeared at the turn of the thirteenth century; whether they were simply precursors to or companions of the artes poeticae in scholastic settings is inconclusive, but they distill impor- tant educational techne shaping poetic modernity ca. 1200.5 In 1199, Alexander of Villedieu turned the traditional grammars of Donatus and Priscian into 2000 alexandrine lines entitled Doctrinal puerorum. His attempt to situate poetics within 1212, Eberhard of Bethune wrote Graecismus, a versed grammar which served asa melodic a supplement structure to hisfor othermemorization works on was poetics. the first Later of inits the kind century, in a millennium. between the In 1240s and 1260s, Simon of Vicelli contributed to this genre with Novum doctrinale. Simon’s text was only in circulation posthumously, around the dawn of the four- guidebook, but he, like his predecessors, speaks to the concern about delivering a classicalteenth century, education so it in was rhetoric unlikely in schools that he entrenchedhad any direct in Christianinfluence patronage. on the authors of The interplay between the Donatus, Priscian, the twelfth-century mnemonic Latin grammars, and the artes poeticae can be assumed, since these grammar texts 6 Grammars outlined examples for numerous parts of the other writing guides, particularizing the categories of pleo- nasm,were ubiquitousmetaplasmus, in schema,institutions and tropes,of learning. with a tendency to focus on the last. Tropes typically consisted of catachresis, antonomasia, metaphor, hyperbole, metonymy, onomatopoeia, allegory, and synecdoche. In addition to adhering to order, there is evidence that the rhetoricians of the ars poetica adapted general formatting from the authors of the grammars. For example, Geoffrey of Vinsauf wrote his ars poetica in verse in around the same number of lines as Alexander. John of Garland7 wrote a similar Latin verse grammar around the same year as his Parisiana poetria. What is important for John and Geoffrey is not how rhetoric should be approached by the university student, but how it is approached in common practice; and, of tanta- mount importance, how poetry could be written in a new, northwestern European already in regional circulation (Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes), there seemed tostyle, be ora tacit even understanding a new tongue. amongstWith classically the writers­influenced of ars vernacularpoetria that verse their literature instruc- 5 My use of “modern” here as not a stationary historical moment but a site of cultural shift is informed by Jahan Ramazani’s introductory chapter, “Poetry, Modernity, and Globalization,” in Ramazani, A Transnational Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 1–22. 6 Rhetorical guides were often grouped with treatises of the same sort in this period. Glasgow, were complied and copied together as a kind of anthology. See A. G. Rigg, “Medieval Latin Poetic Anthologies,”University of MediaevalGlasgow, MS Studies Hunterian V.8.14 is one example indicating that these sundry treatises 7 Commentaria on the Doctrinale alone, some have suggested that John 39 (1977): 281–330. wanted to put forth his own tracts, as he took issue with Alexander’s shoehorning of grammar’s complexityNot satisfied into onewith poem. his See John’s Compendium grammaticae, Clavis compendii (ca. 1234). parisiana poetria 85 john of Garland'S and The vernacular­exemplar Turn tional materials on composition would not be limited solely to Latin applications. We see the suggestion most eruptive in segments detailing the description of the lady—or, in John’s case, the Virgin. That said, Ars poetria were arguably8 intended for Latin-literate, scholastic audi- ences of at least an intermediate skill level, even though I argue that their impact on historical poetics is much more wide-ranging. Instruction informed the conceit-ori- ented style of vernacular English verse, since the audience for these guidebooks and the authors of Early Middle English verse were typically one and the same. Matthew - tury.of Vendôme, Amid the Geoffrey encroaching of Vinsauf, tide of Gervase Aristotelianism, of Melkley, these and fourJohn rhetoriciansof Garland reflect engage a withchange metaphor in temperament and explore toward the theimplications metaphor of in invoking the first halfphysical of the matter thirteenth for more cen - mightabstract bring didactic to mind purposes. Viktor Shklovksy’sThese explorations ostranenie take or two ‘estrangement’ directions. The from first his direc 1917 tion explicitly defines and9 His exemplifies admonitions metaphor uncannily as a recall process the ofproject estrangement. of ars poetria One: Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. ‘If essaythe “Art whole as Technique.”complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.’ And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. - aphor in the practice of employing metaphorical estrangement throughout their These authors supplement or complicate their definitions and advised use of met- hyper-conscioustexts, not only to awareness revivify rhetorical of their ownconcepts learning which process. had been The petrifiedsecond direction in recopy of metaphoricaling fragments exploration of Quintilian is theirand Cicerouse of itbut in alsotheir to own force guidebooks, students toas explications,engage with examples, or citations, culled from varying classical and increasingly contemporary sources.10 In short, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, school masters and scholars were retooling poetic art, transforming it from an object of study to an effective instrument of education and form of creative expression. It was no longer a mark of intellectual rigour to simply read and mimic the art of classic poetry, such as the Aeneid; instead, artes