Medieval debate poetry

Medieval debate poetry refers to a genre of poems popular in England and France during the late medieval period (although broadly the same type of debate poems existed in the ancient and medieval Near Eastern literatures, as noted below).

Essentially, a debate poem depicts a dialogue between two natural opposites (e.g. sun vs. moon, winter vs. summer). Although the particulars can vary considerably, this can function as a general definition of the literary form. The debates are necessarily emotionally charged, highlighting the contrasting values and personalities of the participants, and exposing their essentially opposite natures. On the surface, debate poems typically appear didactic, but under this often lies a genuine dialogue between two equally paired opponents.

Debate poems were common in Mesopotamian Sumerian-language literature (first half of the 3rd millennium BC) and were part of the tradition of Arsacid and Sassanid Persian literature (third century BC - seventh century AD), continued in later medieval Islamic Persian literature.

The European debate poem first appeared as a literary form in the eighth and ninth centuries, during the Carolingian Renaissance. Beginning in the late ninth century, European clergymen began writing debate poems in Latin. The first example we have of the form is Conflictus Veris et Hiemis (Contention of Spring and Winter), which was written in the late eighth century and is commonly attributed to Alcuin. This poem formally marks the birth of medieval debate poetry and established a pattern for later poems of the genre – it is light hearted but slightly academic, the exchanges in it are few but succinct, the debate is carefully balanced and the issue at hand is resolved.

At the time, a preoccupation with dichotomies in the world was evident in nearly every type of literature, but only debate poetry was devoted entirely to the exploration of these dichotomies. The idea was that every thing – whether it be concrete, abstract, alive or inanimate – had a natural and logical opposite, and this conception was only bolstered by the religious language being used by the Catholic Church at the time. Oppositions abounded between things like the old and new testament, vice and virtue, sins of the spirit and sins of the flesh, good and evil, God and Satan, human and divine, redemption and damnation. Additionally, this conception was bolstered by the presence of overt dichotomies in the natural world, such as night and day, summer and winter, sea and land, male and female, sun and moon, youth and old age. The purpose of the debate poem, then, is to pit one of these things against its opposite.

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