In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Patrick Roper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>> Pardon me for changing the subject being discussed, but would someone tell
>> me something about Macaronic Verse? Is it always a "burlesque"
>> form as the
>> dictionary implies, or is there a body of more serious work?
>> Are there, for example, macaronic heroic couplets? A few inquiring minds
>> want to know. . .
>
>The dictionary I cited before says, among much else, that in Middle English
>examples "whole lines of Latin are frequently inserted as quasi-refrains,
>and since the metre of both languages often matches, macaronic verse may
>have been an important vehicle for transporting the accentual rhythms of
>Medieval Latin into English."
There are Graeco-Latin macaronics in Ausonius, but hardly in high
seriousness, any more than the odd bits of Greek in Juvenal and Martial.
However, the fourteenth-century Harley Lyrics in British Library MS
Harley 2253 (ed. C. L. Brook, Manchester, 3rd edn. 1964) include (no.
19, fo. 76r, p. 55):
Dum ludis floribus velud lacinia,
le dieu d'amour moi tient en tiel angustia,
merour me tient de duel e de miseria
si ie ne la ay quam amo super omnia . . .
There is also an Anglo-French specimen (no. 28, fo, 83r, pp. 66-8):
Mayden moder milde,
orez cel oreysoun;
from shome (th)ou me shilde
e de ly mal feloun;
for loue of (th)ine childe
me menez de tresoun.
Ich was wod ant wilde,
ore su en prisoun. . . .
A more famous example is the fifteenth-century Germano-Latin Christmas
hymn, which is also familiar in Anglo-Latin translation:
In dulci iubilo
Nun singet und seid froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne
Leit in praesepio,
Leuchtet vor die Sonne,
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O! [ij]
However, it became harder to take the genre seriously once the satiric
genius of Teofilo Folengo, alias Merlinus Cocaius, had published the
successive editions of his macaronic writings, in particular _Baldus_.
To quote the beginning of book 1 in the final, 1554 edition:
Plantasia mihi plus quam phantastica venit,
Historiam Baldi grassis cantare camoenis.
Altisonam cuius phamam, nomenque gaiardum,
Terra tremat, baratrumque metu sibi cagat adossum.
Sed prius altorium vestrum chiamare bisognat
O macaronaeam Musae quae funditis artem. . . .
That is why Pound and Eliot had to reclaim it.
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
--
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Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone
Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?
OX2 6EJ
tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/353865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237
email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
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