An elegant medieval guide to verse composition and rhetoric, presented in a new authoritative edition and English translation. The Art of Making Verses, Ars versificatoria, was composed by the thirteenth-century English poet and teacher Gervase of Melkley, who studied under John de Hauville. He belongs to a select company of French and English scholastic poets including not only de Hauville but also Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris. The educational treatise was probably begun around 1200 & completed in 1220. Gervase departs from established critical texts on poetry by Matthew of VendAme and Geoffrey of Vinsauf; instead, he seeks to teach the art of verse in an entirely new way. The method outlined in Ars versificatoria instructs elementary students how to compose in three progressively more difficult modes: literal but still artful language, metaphor, and irony or paradox. This edition presents a new and improved Latin edition based on the manuscripts, a new translation into English, and thorough annotation of the most original of the medieval Latin treatises on poetry.
