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Classroom commentaries : teaching the Poetria nova across medieval and Renaissance Europe

Classroom commentaries : teaching the Poetria nova across medieval and Renaissance Europe

Curry Woods, Marjorie (The University of Texas at Austin)

The Ohio State University Press (2010)

Abstract

Sometime during the late twelfth century, Galfridus (or Galfredus or Gamfredus or Ganfredus or Gualterus) de Vino Salvo, an Englishman who had studied rhetoric at Paris, returned to his homeland, where he began teaching. This Geoffrey of Vinsauf, as his name is translated into English, was also called Galfridus (with all variants thereof) Anglicus: Geoffrey the Englishman. According to a short complaint poem found in one of the most famous of all medieval rhetorical manuscripts, a certain Geoffrey who was probably ours began lecturing at Northhampton. 

Here he fell afoul of another teacher named Robert, who tried to take Geoffrey’s students and even attacked him physically. Geoffrey’s short poem is a presentation of the case to the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is no archival record of such a case, but the dozen or so early English manuscripts of the Poetria nova and the English manuscript traditions of two related works support the hypothesis that he taught for many years in England.

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