Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the Craft of Writing

Abstract: In his Poetria nova (c.1208–13), Geoffrey of Vinsauf approaches literary composition as a craft that is cultivated through imitation, tentative exploration, and repetition. This essay examines how the compositional exercises prescribed in this versified treatise, as well as in other contemporaneous "arts of poetry," encouraged writers to test different permutations of language until they attained the most effective form. Following the treatise's advice, these writers engaged in a process of trial and error and developed strategies that they could use to shape future compositions. These writing drills thus provide a rare glimpse into the practices and habits of mind of medieval writers. At the same time, they reflect the shifting intellectual landscape of Western Europe at the turn of the thirteenth century, particularly the convergence of Neoplatonist and emerging Aristotelian thought. The treatise's understanding of craft is informed by Aristotle's notion of techne , dramatized in the crafting scenes that populate the allegorical poetry of the twelfth century, namely Bernard Silvester's Cosmographia and Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus .