Toward a Comprehensive Art of Written Discourse: Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the Ars Dictaminis

Abstract

eoffrey of Vinsauf is famous as the premier exponent of the medieval art of poetry. His versified treatise, the Poetria nova, was a self-conscious attempt to update Horace's Art of Poetry, the Poetria vetus, by taUoring its precepts to the exigencies of the medieval schoolroom. The effort was a complete success, and the Poetria nova quickly became by far the most widely used textbook on the ars podriae, as evidenced by its preservation in nearly 200 manuscripts from all over Europe.' Less weU known is the fact that Geoffrey concerned himself with the composition of prose as well as verse. In fact, he wrote as many as three prose treatises deaUng at least partially with the composition of prose. Though none of these treatises achieved anything approaching the international popularity of the Poetria nova, they are valuable for indicating the full scope of Geoffrey's teaching. Moreover, one of them, the stUl unpublished treatise called the long Documentum, was sufficiently important to be imitated by two of Geoffrey's contemporaries and to rival the Poetria nova's popularity in the schools of fourteenthand fifteenth-century En-