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Neophilologus (2016) 100:539552
DOI 10.1007/s11061-016-9495-3
Published online: 30 July 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
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 neu onques de chanter. Gianfranco Continis remark on Bonvesin da la Rivas 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 Mlk and Wolfzettels metrical Rpertoire.
Keywords Metrics Anisosyllabism Trouvres Poetry Old French literature
Codex unicus
There is no question that the codex unicus is one of the most puzzling data (Avalle 1978: 3) of the ecdotic practice dealing with medieval Romance texts, as well as (Avalle 1978: 25) the most frequent: this frequency also affects the Old French lyric poems which have been declared anisosyllabic by Mlk and Wolfzettels metrical Rpertoire (1972).1 Nonetheless, Gianfranco Contini (2007: 156) had already alerted us about the danger of trusting in the codex unicus by focusing on Bonvesin da la Rivas texts, and the problem still remains the same as the main part of the so-called anisosyllabic poems are attested by single witnesses.
1 Their che 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) sullanisosillabismo nella versicazione 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).
& Fabio Sangiovanni [email protected]
1 Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
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Web End = Why the codex unicus Is Still Dangerous for Medieval Metrics: Joining the Old French Anisosyllabic Song RS 845a to the Isosyllabic RS 789
Fabio Sangiovanni1
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540 F. Sangiovanni
Moreover, Alfredo Stussi (2011: 145) has recently reminded the fact that un unico testimone rende particolarmente vulnerabile leditore, privo di termini di confronto nel caso di varianti neutre e perci inavvertitamente portato a considerarle lezioni autentiche.2
On the one hand we observe the resulting risk that phenomena of...