Geoffrey de Vinsauf

Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) is a representative of the early medieval grammarian movement, termed preceptive grammar by James J. Murphy for its interest in teaching ars poetria (1971, vii ff.).

Ars poetria is a subdivision of the grammatical art (ars grammatica) which synthesizes "rhetorical" and "grammatical" elements. The line of demarcation between these two fields is not firmly established in the Middle Ages. Gallo explains that "both of these liberal arts taught composition and taught the student to examine the diction, figurative language, and meters of the curriculum authors who were to serve as models for imitation. However it was rhetoric and not grammar that was concerned with Invention of subject matter and with disposition or organization of the work" as well as memory and delivery (72).

Murphy explains that the medieval artes poetriae are divided into two types. First, there is the short, specialized type of treatise dealing with figurae, colores, tropi, and other verbal ornaments. They appeared separately all over Europe, usually anonymous, and were incorporated in elementary schooling, as adjuncts to ordinary grammar instruction. The second type of ars poetriae includes such works as the Ars versificatoria (c. 1175) of Matthew of Vendôme, the Laborintus (after 1213, before 1280) of Eberhard the German, the Ars versificaria (c. 1215) of Gervase of Melkley, the Poetria nova (1208–1213) and the Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi (after 1213) of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and the De arte prosayca, metrica, et rithmica (after 1229) of John of Garland (1971, xxi-xxii). The artes poetriae constituted poetry as an academic discipline, and promoted its participation in the methods of logic (Copeland).

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