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Rengifo's Debt to Antonio da Tempo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The most important versification manual in the history of Spanish literature is undoubtedly Juan Díaz Rengifo's Arte poética española, which first appeared in Salamanca in 1592 and was reissued a number of times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That the influence of this Renaissance treatise on Spanish verse has been great cannot be questioned. For approximately four centuries, in fact, it was the handbook on metrics for versifiers and poets. Reasons for the value and usefulness of the Arte poética española are not lacking. Rengifo was a scholarly investigator—scholarly in the modern sense. He worked systematically; he based his conclusions on actual practice rather than on theory; he illustrated his rules with examples chosen generally from the best-known poets; he studied the investigations of previous writers and, in full bibliographical references in marginal notes that correspond to today's footnotes, frankly gave them credit for all ideas and material borrowed from them; he showed unbiased judgment in the presentation of controversial topics; he described accurately, but never prescribed; he wrote clearly in simple language and without unnecessary wordage; he supplied time-saving devices for the reader; and he presented his work in an orderly, logical, and concise manner. His work is comprehensive and well balanced.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1955
References
1 Reportedly written by his brother Diego García Rengifo. For a discussion of the various writings on metrics during the Golden Age consult Emiliano Díez Echarri, Teorías metricas delsiglo de oro. Apuntespara la historia del verso espafiol. Madrid, 1949.
2 According to the edition of 1644 (Madrid, Imprenta de Francisco Martínez), the work had been approved for re-publication in 1627-8. Permission for the 1644 edition was given, according to the official Licencia signed by Francisco Espadaña, on the condition that ‘la dicha impression se haga conforme al original'. The work was augmented by Joseph Vicens in 1703 ‘con dos tratados; uno de avisos, y reglas; otro de assonantes; con cuarenta y ocho capítulos; con un compendio de toda el arte poética, y casi cinco mil consonantes’ and was ‘declarada con nuevos ejemplos, famosas autoridades, más fácil disposition, y explicatión de consonantes difíciles … ‘ This enlarged edition (Barcelona, Imprenta de Joseph Texidó) served as the basis for subsequent editions, which show slight or no change: 1727 (Barcelona, Imprenta de María Martí Viuda, administrada por Domingo Taller); n. d. (1758?) (Barcelona, Imprenta de María Martí Viuda, administrada por Mauro Marti); 1759 (Barcelona, Imprenta de María Angela Martí Viuda, en la Plaza de San Jayme). I am not aware of any other edition. References in the present study are to the edition of 1644, which is almost an exact copy of the first edition.
3 JuliiCaesarisScaligeriviriclarissimipoeticeslibriseptem … 1561;seconded. 1581.
4 Delle rime volgari trattato di Antonio da Tempo … composto nel 1332, ed. Giusto Grion Bologna, 1869. Included in the volume is an edition of Francesco Baratella's Italian Compendio dell’ Arte Ritmica (1447), based on Tempo's work.
5 The rotundellus (retondello) was, in Italian verse, the equivalent of the zéjel in Spanish verse popular in Spain in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but seldom, if ever, employed in Rengifo's time—hence its omission in the Arte poetica espahola. Rengifo does, however, in his chapter on the redondilla (xxn) s a y : ‘ … se llama Redondilla, porque se cantan en los corros donde bailan, como dice Tempo de sus redondillas italianas.'
6 ‘Et dic quod ideo appellatur motus confectus, quia verba sunt confecta cum sententiis notabilibus et pulchris et cum verbis praegnantibus; et ideo dicitur motus, quia homo bene et sententiose movetur ad loquendum cum huiusmodi verbis duplicibus habentibus unumcunque iam bonum ac pulcherrimum intellectum. Quidam tamen istos motus confectos vulgariter appellant frotolas; et male dicunt iudicio meo, quia frotolae possent did verba rusticorum et aliarum personarum nullam perfectam sententiam contmentia.’ (pp. 152-153).
7 ‘No pongo aqui las formas de muchas canciones, ballatas, y madrigales que andan de mano, por no las auer hallado en algún poeta italiano; y porque mi intento es, tratando del verso que tomamos de los italianos, ensenar solamente aquellas composiciones en que ellos le han usado, para que pues les imitamos en la cantidad, y número de cada verso, les imitemos en las composiciones, y consonancias que dellos se hazen’ (ch. LXIII) .
8 It is important to note that in chapters XLI and LIV-LVII incl. on the verso heroico, the octava, the sexta, the cuartete, and the terceto, inserted between the sonnet and the serventesio, and also in chapters LXIII ff. (except LXVI) Rengifo relies only in part on Tempo. He notes that Tempo attributes the invention of the terceto (terza rima) to Dante (ch. LVII ).
9 In ch. III of'De consonantes’ Rengifo leans on the authority of Tempo in the matter of accent shift within a word for the sake of rime.
10 Compare the ironical statement of Tempo's modern editor, Giusto Grion (pp. 13-14): ‘All’ autore sopravvisse il libro. Nel proemio egli professa di dettare la sua Somma per non essergli giunto sott’ occhi alcun trattato intorno alle rime volgari. Non conosceva dunque l'opera di Guido Cavalcanti, scritta poco dopo il 1269 e certo prima del 1293, letta da Filippo Villani alia fine del trecento, e da Domenico Tullio Fausto anche un buon secolo piú tardi. Né gli era noto il trattato della Volgare Eloquenza di Dante Alighieri, ch’ egli dovette aver conosciuto di persona a Padova, dove Dante ne scrisse il primo libro nell' autunno del 1304 e nell' estate del 1306 il secondo; e la cuí Commedia gli era ben nota … . Habent sua fata libelli; il libro del Cavalcanti andó smarrito, il libro di Dante rimase quasi ignorato fino al 1529, e quello di Antonio da Tempo fu cercato e letto e studiato in tutti i secoli!'