Contents

Prosimetrum

Usage of term[edit]

The term prosimetrum is first attested in the Rationes dictandi of Hugh of Bologna, in the early 12th century. Sources differ on the date, one suggesting around 1119,^[5] another about 1130.^[6] Hugh divided metrical composition into three kinds: quantitative verse (carmina), verse based on syllable count and assonance (rithmi), and "the mixed form ... when a part is expressed in verse and a part in prose" (prosimetrum).^[5] The derived adjective prosimetrical occurs in English as early as Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656) where it is defined as "consisting partly of Prose, partly of Meteer or Verse".^[7]

Works such as historical chronicles and annals, which quote poetry previously composed by other authors, are not generally regarded as "true" prosimetra.^[8] In the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition, however, vernacular histories and family sagas that quote verses by other authors are commonly accepted as prosimetra.^[9] Researchers of Old Norse Íslendingasögur have recently made more extensive attempts at cataloging and systematically understanding the prosimetric aspects in that literary corpus.^[10]

Quoted or "inset" verses are a familiar feature of longer historical texts in the Old Irish and Middle Irish traditions as well.^[11] The role of such verse quotations within the prose narrative varies; they may be mined as historical source-material, cited as factual corroboration of an event or recited by a character as dialogue.^[11][12]

Examples[edit]

• Satyricon (c. 1st century CE) by Petronius^[2]
• The Mahabharata (c. 4th century?)^[2]
• Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani (4th century)^[13]
• Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524) by Boethius^[2]
• One Thousand and One Nights (c. 8th century?)^[14]
• De rectoribus christianis, by Sedulius Scottus (9th century)
• The Ring of the Dove (c. 1022) by Ibn Hazm
• Cosmographia (c. 1147) by Bernard Silvestris^[2]
• De planctu Naturæ (c. 1168–72) by Alain de Lille
• Acallam na Senórach (c. 12th century)^[15]
• Buile Shuibhne (c. 12th century)^[16]
• Pantheon (1188) by Godfrey of Viterbo
• Gesta Danorum (c. 1208) by Saxo Grammaticus
• Aucassin et Nicolette (c. 13th century)^[2]
• The Secret History of the Mongols (c. 13th century)^[17]
• La Vita Nuova (c. 1295) by Dante Alighieri^[2]
• Eyrbyggja saga (c. 13th century)^[18]
• Grettis saga (c. 14th century)^[19]
• Arcadia (1504) by Sannazaro
• Diana (1559), by Jorge de Montemayor
• The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590), by Philip Sidney
• The Lover's Watch (1686), by Aphra Behn (translation of La Montre d'amour [1666] by Balthazar de Bonnecorse)
• Oku no Hosomichi (1694) by Matsuo Bashō^[20]
• Spring and All (1923) by William Carlos Williams
• In Parenthesis (1937) by David Jones^[21]
• Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov^[22]

See also[edit]

• Menippus
• Haibun
• Maqāma

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Dronke, Peter. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-674-93475-X
• Green, Roland, et al., ed. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6
• Harris, Joseph, and Karl Reichl, ed. Prosimetrum: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse. Cambridge, Eng.: D. S. Brewer, 1997. ISBN 0-85991-475-5
• Jones, Samuel, Aled Jones, and Jennifer Dukes Knight, ed. Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 24/25, 2004 and 2005. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-03528-7
• O’Donoghue, Heather. Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-926732-3
• Ross, Margaret Clunies. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005. ISBN 978-1843842798