A ''prosimetrum'' (plural ''prosimetra'') is a poetic composition which exploits a combination of
prose
Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...
(''prosa'') and
verse (''metrum'');
[Braund, Susanna.]
Prosimetrum
. In Cancil, Hubert, and Helmuth Schneider, eds. ''Brill's New Pauly''. Brill Online, 2012. Retrieved 2 October 2015. in particular, it is a text composed in alternating segments of prose and verse.
[Brogan, T.V.F. "Prosimetrum". In Green et al., pp. 1115–1116.] It is widely found in Western and Eastern literature.
While narrative ''prosimetrum'' may encompass at one extreme a prose story with occasional verse interspersed, and at the other, verse with occasional prose explanations, in true ''prosimetrum'' the two forms are represented in more equal measure.
[Harris & Reichl, p. 11.] A distinction is sometimes drawn
[Hanson, Kristin, and Paul Kiparsky. "The Nature of Verse and Its Consequences for the Mixed Form". In Harris & Reichl, p. 36.] between texts in which verse is the dominant form and those in which prose dominates; there the terms ''prosimetrum'' and ''versiprose'' are applied respectively.
Usage of term
The term ''prosimetrum'' is first attested in the ''Rationes dictandi'' of Hugh of Bologna, in the early 12th century. Sources differ on the date, one suggesting around 1119,
another about 1130. Hugh divided metrical composition into three kinds:
quantitative verse (''carmina''), verse based on syllable count and assonance (''rithmi''), and "the mixed form ... when a part is expressed in verse and a part in prose" (''prosimetrum'').
[Dronke, p. 2.] The derived adjective ''prosimetrical'' occurs in English as early as Thomas Blount’s ''Glossographia'' (1656) where it is defined as "consisting partly of Prose, partly of Meteer or Verse".
Works such as historical chronicles and annals, which quote poetry previously composed by other authors, are not generally regarded as "true" ''prosimetra''. In the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition, however, vernacular histories and family sagas that quote verses by other authors are commonly accepted as ''prosimetra''. Researchers of Old Norse
Íslendingasögur
The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic Saga, sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and earl ...
have recently made more extensive attempts at cataloging and systematically understanding the prosimetric aspects in that literary corpus.
Quoted or "inset" verses are a familiar feature of longer historical texts in the Old Irish and Middle Irish traditions as well.
[Mac Cana, Proinsias. "Prosimetrum in Insular Celtic Literature." In Harris & Reichl, pp. 110–111.] The role of such verse quotations within the prose narrative varies; they may be mined as historical source-material, cited as factual corroboration of an event or recited by a character as dialogue.
Examples
*''
Satyricon
The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century AD, though the manuscript tradition identifi ...
'' (c. 1st century CE) by
*''The
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
'' (c. 4th century?)
*''
Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani'' (4th century)
*''
Consolation of Philosophy'' (c. 524) by
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...
*''
One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...
'' (c. 8th century?)
* ''De rectoribus christianis'', by
Sedulius Scottus (9th century)
*''
The Ring of the Dove'' (c. 1022) by
Ibn Hazm
Ibn Hazm (; November 994 – 15 August 1064) was an Andalusian Muslim polymath, historian, traditionist, jurist, philosopher, and theologian, born in the Córdoban Caliphate, present-day Spain. Described as one of the strictest hadith interpre ...
*''
Cosmographia'' (c. 1147) by
Bernard Silvestris
*''
De planctu Naturæ'' (c. 1168–72) by
Alain de Lille
*''
Acallam na Senórach
''Acallam na Senórach'' (, whose title in English has been given variously as ''Colloquy of the Ancients'', ''Tales of the Elders of Ireland'', ''The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland'', etc.), is an important prosimetric Middle Irish narrat ...
'' (c. 12th century)
*''
Buile Shuibhne
''Buile Shuibhne'' or ''Buile Suibne'' (, ''The Madness of Suibhne'' or ''Suibhne's Frenzy'') is a medieval Irish tale about Suibhne mac Colmáin, king of the Dál nAraidi, who was driven insane by the curse of Saint Rónán Finn. The insanity ...
'' (c. 12th century)
*''
Pantheon'' (1188) by
Godfrey of Viterbo Godfrey of Viterbo (c. 1120 – c. 1196) was a Roman Catholic chronicler, either Italian or German. From an early age he displayed great activity as one of the clergy at the court of Conrad III and later Frederick I, accompanying the latter on ma ...
*''
Gesta Danorum'' (c. 1208) by
Saxo Grammaticus
Saxo Grammaticus (), also known as Saxo cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian, theologian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. He is the author ...
*''
Aucassin et Nicolette'' (c. 13th century)
*''
The Secret History of the Mongols
The ''Secret History of the Mongols'' is the oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolic languages. Written for the Borjigin, Mongol royal family some time after the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, it recounts his life and conquests, and parti ...
'' (c. 13th century)
*''
La Vita Nuova'' (c. 1295) by
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
*''
Eyrbyggja saga
''Eyrbyggja saga'' (; ) is one of the Icelanders' sagas; its title can be translated as ''The Saga of the People of Eyri.'' It was written by an anonymous writer, who describes a long-standing feud between Snorri Goði and Arnkel Goði, two stron ...
'' (c. 13th century)
*''
Grettis saga'' (c. 14th century)
*''
Arcadia'' (1504) by
Sannazaro
*''
Diana'' (1559), by
Jorge de Montemayor
*''
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia'' (1590), by
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan era, Elizabethan age.
His works include a sonnet sequence, ' ...
*''
The Lover's Watch'' (1686), by
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (; baptism, bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration (England), Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writ ...
(translation of ''
La Montre d'amour''
666by
Balthazar de Bonnecorse)
*''
Oku no Hosomichi'' (1694) by
Matsuo Bashō
* ''
Spring and All'' (1923) by
William Carlos Williams
* ''
In Parenthesis'' (1937) by
David Jones
*''
Pale Fire
''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic co ...
'' (1962) by
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
[ Alexis, André. ''Beauty and Sadness''. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2010. p. 157. ]
See also
*
Menippus
*
Haibun
*
Maqāma
References
Bibliography
*
Dronke, Peter. ''Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
*Green, Roland, et al., ed. ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
*Harris, Joseph, and Karl Reichl, ed. ''Prosimetrum: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse''. Cambridge, Eng.: D. S. Brewer, 1997.
*Jones, Samuel, Aled Jones, and Jennifer Dukes Knight, ed. ''Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 24/25, 2004 and 2005''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
*O’Donoghue, Heather. ''Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
*Ross, Margaret Clunies. ''A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics''. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005.
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Literary genres