Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

With an unusually broad scope encompassing how Europeans taught and learned reading and writing at all levels, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe provides a synoptic picture of medieval and early modern instruction in rhetoric, poetics, and composition theory and practice. As Marjorie Curry Woods convincingly argues, the decision of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) to write his rhetorical treatise in verse resulted in a unique combination of rhetorical doctrine, poetic examples, and creative exercises that proved malleable enough to inspire teachers for three centuries.

Based on decades of research, this book excerpts, translates, and analyzes teachers' notes and commentaries in the more than two hundred extant manuscripts of the text. We learn the reasons for the popularity of the Poetria nova among medieval and early Renaissance teachers, how prose as well as verse genres were taught, why the Poetria nova was a required text in central European universities, its attractions for early modern scholars and historians, and how we might still learn from it today. Woods' monumental achievement will allow modern scholars to see the Poetria nova as earlier Europeans did: a witty and perennially popular text central to the experience of almost every student.

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Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

With an unusually broad scope encompassing how Europeans taught and learned reading and writing at all levels, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe provides a synoptic picture of medieval and early modern instruction in rhetoric, poetics, and composition theory and practice. As Marjorie Curry Woods convincingly argues, the decision of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) to write his rhetorical treatise in verse resulted in a unique combination of rhetorical doctrine, poetic examples, and creative exercises that proved malleable enough to inspire teachers for three centuries.

Based on decades of research, this book excerpts, translates, and analyzes teachers' notes and commentaries in the more than two hundred extant manuscripts of the text. We learn the reasons for the popularity of the Poetria nova among medieval and early Renaissance teachers, how prose as well as verse genres were taught, why the Poetria nova was a required text in central European universities, its attractions for early modern scholars and historians, and how we might still learn from it today. Woods' monumental achievement will allow modern scholars to see the Poetria nova as earlier Europeans did: a witty and perennially popular text central to the experience of almost every student.

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Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

by Marjorie Curry Woods
Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe

by Marjorie Curry Woods

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Overview

With an unusually broad scope encompassing how Europeans taught and learned reading and writing at all levels, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe provides a synoptic picture of medieval and early modern instruction in rhetoric, poetics, and composition theory and practice. As Marjorie Curry Woods convincingly argues, the decision of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) to write his rhetorical treatise in verse resulted in a unique combination of rhetorical doctrine, poetic examples, and creative exercises that proved malleable enough to inspire teachers for three centuries.

Based on decades of research, this book excerpts, translates, and analyzes teachers' notes and commentaries in the more than two hundred extant manuscripts of the text. We learn the reasons for the popularity of the Poetria nova among medieval and early Renaissance teachers, how prose as well as verse genres were taught, why the Poetria nova was a required text in central European universities, its attractions for early modern scholars and historians, and how we might still learn from it today. Woods' monumental achievement will allow modern scholars to see the Poetria nova as earlier Europeans did: a witty and perennially popular text central to the experience of almost every student.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814254806
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication date: 08/15/2017
Series: Text and Context Series
Edition description: 1
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: (w) x (h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Marjorie Curry Woods is professor of English and comparative literature at The University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations XI

Plates Described XV

Plates XVII

Preface and Acknowledgments XXXIII

chapter 1 Why was the Poetria Nova so Popular? 1

"The Efficient Cause of This Book" 1

Off with His Head! 2

The Other Audience 5

Shaping the Student 8

Better than the Ancients 12

The Arts of Poetry and Prose 15

"The Usefulness of the Work" 16

The Success of the Poetria nova 21

The Accessus and Frame 26

A Double Structure 35

Purple Patches 41

Proverbial Wisdom 44

The Masterpiece 47

chapter 2 The Poetria Nova as School Text 50

Reading between the Lines 50

Back to Basics 53

Dominican Reiner von Cappel 54

Shaping the Narrative 58

Better than Sex 60

Pyramus and Thisbe in the Poetria nova 63

Shorter Is Better 66

The Female Body in the Classroom 67

Description and Circumlocution 70

Shortest Is Not Best 72

Transference and Transformation 73

The Display of Figures 75

Sermons? 79

Separating the Men from the Boys 85

Conversion: The Origin of Style 87

Student Determination 91

chapter 3 The Poetria Nova as Early Humanist Text 94

Our Englishman in Italy 94

Bartholomew of Pisa / Bartholomeus de Sancto Concordio 96

The Subject Is Rhetoric 98

A Preacher and a Teacher 100

The Poetria nova and the Preaching Orders 104

Pace of Ferrara 107

The Subject Is Poetics 112

Pace on Mussato 118

Divide and Elevate 120

In Season 128

Stand and Counterstand 132

Geoffrey and Barzizza 136

Meanwhile, Back in Padua: Guizzardo of Bologna 138

Women in the Margin 141

Bible Stories in Composition Class 144

"It's Muglio" 146

A Teacher of Notaries in Ravenna 148

Franciscellus Mancinus, Benedictine Humanist 152

Comedy and the Commedia 158

Back and Forth 161

chapter 4 The Poetria Nova as University Text in Central Europe 163

Questioning Authority 164

A University Text 166

The Poetria nova as Dictaminal Treatise 169

Repetition, Redundancy, and the Learning Curve 172

The Importance of Being Aristotelian 175

The Poetria nova at Prague 178

Dybinus of Prague 182

Scripta, Dicta, and Reportata 183

Scripta vs. Dicta in Practice 187

The Poetria nova at Vienna, Krakow, and Erfurt 210

Monks at University 219

Two Students at Leipzig 222

Excursus on the English Orbit 227

chapter 5 Seventeenth-Century Commentaries on the Poetria Nova 234

The English Encyclopedists 234

Athanasius Kircher, Jesuit Polymath 240

Zacharias Lund: Classical Scholar and Poet 245

An End and a Beginning 251

Afterword 253

Looking Back 253

Geoffrey after Quintilian 255

Erasmus and Geoffrey 258

Looking Ahead 264

Appendices

I Transcription of List of Contents of the Poetria nova in Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 311 269

II Scripta vs. Dicta in Practice: Transcriptions 273

Manuscript List of the Poetria Nova and Commentaries 289

List of Incipits 309

Bibliography 319

Index Locorum 353

Index of Manuscripts Cited 356

General Index 359

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