The Art of Making Verses

An elegant medieval guide to verse composition and rhetoric, presented in a new authoritative edition and English translation.

The Art of Making Verses, Ars versificatoria, was composed by the thirteenth-century English poet and teacher Gervase of Melkley, who studied under John de Hauville. He belongs to a select company of French and English scholastic poets including not only de Hauville but also Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris. The educational treatise was probably begun around 1200 and completed in 1220.

Gervase departs from established critical texts on poetry by Matthew of Vendôme and Geoffrey of Vinsauf; instead, he seeks to teach the art of verse in an entirely new way. The method outlined in Ars versificatoria instructs elementary students how to compose in three progressively more difficult modes: literal but still artful language, metaphor, and irony or paradox.

This edition presents a new and improved Latin edition based on the manuscripts, a new translation into English, and thorough annotation of the most original of the medieval Latin treatises on poetry.