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Why the codex unicus Is Still Dangerous for Medieval Metrics: Joining the Old French Anisosyllabic Song RS 845a to the Isosyllabic RS 789

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Abstract

It has never been noticed that the Old French song RS 845a Las ne [me] doi por ce desesperer, preserved by a single witness, is the anisosyllabic version of the isosyllabic RS 789 Meudre ocoison n’euç onques de chanter. Gianfranco Contini’s remark on Bonvesin da la Riva’s texts about the danger of trusting in metrical irregularities gathered by a codex unicus is renewed by this paper, as well as by analysing the song RS 836, anisosyllabic in Mölk and Wolfzettel’s metrical Répertoire.

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Notes

  1. Their fiche collects more than sixty anisosyllabic texts: this quantity should be consistently reduced (cf. Menichetti 2006), as I tried to demonstrate in my PhD thesis (Stati di imperfezione. Indagini metriche (ed ecdotiche) sull’anisosillabismo nella versificazione romanza medievale, con particolare riferimento alla lirica oitanica, University of Padua, 2013, supervisor: Furio Brugnolo), focusing on this metrical matter; cf. Sangiovanni (2015a, b, c).

  2. A different point of view in Mariotti 2000: 487 and ff.

  3. Cf. Lannutti (2015).

  4. Nonetheless, there are some rhymical identities among the stanzas, at least in the form of assonance (in any case, cf. the constancy of the lines d in the sixth position).

  5. With the exceptions of the stanzas with different rhymes.

  6. Even if, as Gennrich (1919: 359) observed, we may hypothesize that the first line of the refrain is «Vierge Marie, douce et piteuse, empetrez», with a 12-syll. rhyming, not precisely, with the 12-syll. of the stanza, despite the too strong enjambement.

  7. With the interlinear addition of e on Virge

  8. Here an abbreviation for et cetera

  9. The initial c was removed and substituted in the line-spacing by de

  10. Here an abbreviation for et cetera

  11. Also ll. 61–62 have syllabic problems: they were eliminated by Jeanroy.

  12. The sign ˆ means the possibility of synaloepha between hemistichs.

  13. Dealing with the topic of the “three scripts” and its presence in medieval works, cf. Willaert 2004: 120 and ff.

  14. A different debatable solution in Bertoni 1912: 245 and ff.

  15. That is: «with cuers the meaning is “gladden”, “please”, and with cors “delight”, “please”, “restore to health”».

  16. «Pour les vers surnuméraires, qui nous concernent plus particulièrement, tout les dénonce comme apocryphes, qu’il s’agisse de ceux de la strophe V, où le vers de 12 syllabes ne rime ni n’assone avec aucun des vers de la strophe, ou des octosyllabes a b des autres strophes: ceux de la strophe II répètent en d’autres termes l’idée qui est déjà dans le deuxième vers de la même strophe et ils associent une finale nasale (souvint) aux finales orales oubli et amy; ceux de la strophe IV constituent une sorte de glose nébuleuse, et le vers a n’assone pas avec les vers correspondants; de même dans les strophes VII et IX, il énoncent de pieuses considérations tout à fait étrangères au jeu d’oppositions entre le martyre de Jésus et les plaisirs mondains sur lesquelles sont organisés les quatrains d’octosyllabes des strophes V à IX; de surcroît les vers a n’assonent pas avec les vers correspondants». In the second stanza, indeed, the ll. 15–16 seem to repeat what the l. 12 already expressed (considering as well oubli ~ oublïeus), but their presence looks necessary if we observe the relationship betweeen mes j’ai le cuer ~ que respondrai donques, where the conjunction donques is due to the presence of the first person, which is absent in ll. 11–14, into the clause of l. 15 followed by the consecutive of l. 16. Taking a risk of overturning the hypothesis, we may rather suppose that ll. 11–12 are redundant, though the initial invocation may be requested by 13 tu; ll. 13–14 seem to be essential to the presence of the adversative 15 mes; hence, there is no syntactic or rhetorical evidence that we have to renounce to a couplet among the ll. 11–16. However, we have to distinguish the case of stanzas IV, VII e IX, since it is easier to recur to the hypothesis of apocryphy with the addition of a gloss or a not necessary specification.

  17. Nonetheless, MW’s syllable count is completely incorrect, beyond the fact that the occurrence of this schema should be definitively deleted, as we are going to observe.

  18. The square brackets [] mean integration, while the angle ones < > mean elimination.

  19. Ed. mout

  20. A misprint for ‘sixième’.

  21. The identification is due to the consultation of Trouveors database.

  22. Maybe: ‘with no more (unfulfilled) desire’, in a construction similar to sans plus de demorer; Petersen: «sans plus de desirier est obscur et la rime est fausse (il faudrait un mot en er)», but we can certainly suppose a handwriting variation of desirer

  23. To be corrected with que (ke)

  24. MS: mons esperis

  25. Following Ménard, the «séquence verbe avoir + régime + participe, fréquente en AF, est le tour où par excellence le participe s’accorde avec le complément puisque le complément d’une part dissocie le verbe avoir et le participe, d’autre part précède immédiatement le participe. En poésie, quelques exceptions se rencontrent pour des raisons métriques, mais en prose le participe s’accorde toujours».

  26. We could offer many examples of this phenomenon: cf. at least the instance of Pater noster,a Deo me confeso in Lannutti (2009: 153–154), which compares the different metrical features of Memoriali bolognesi and the Saibante codex.

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  1. Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Fabio Sangiovanni

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Sangiovanni, F. Why the codex unicus Is Still Dangerous for Medieval Metrics: Joining the Old French Anisosyllabic Song RS 845a to the Isosyllabic RS 789. Neophilologus 100, 539–552 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-016-9495-3

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