A Good Idea, in Theory: Why Mathias of Linköping's Poetria Fell Short in Practice

Abstract

Although highly innovative in its blend of medieval Aristotelian with Horatian and Ciceronian doctrine, the Poetria by the fourteenth-century Swedish writer Mathias of Linköping survives in only one manuscript copy and appears to have had little or no influence outside Sweden. Likely reasons for its failure to gain traction among late medieval teachers of Latin composition are (1) its sharp separation of prose from poetry, (2) its implication that verse composition is a more advanced subject than prose composition, and (3) its disproportionate reliance on theoretical precepts rather than illustrative examples.