Influence
Popularity of Geoffrey of Vinsauf's didactic treatises has raised the question of possible influence on the later English poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1342-1400), Thomas Usk (d. 1388), and John Gower (ca. 1330-1408). Chaucer's parody in the Nun's Priest's Tale of Geoffrey of Vinsauf's use of apostrophe seems to ridicule the instruction provided in the Poetria nova, and has therefore been interpreted as Chaucer's contempt for Geoffrey of Vinsauf's doctrine. A more profound examination of Chaucer's principles of composition, however, reveals that the essential scheme of the Wife of Bath's Prologue (specifically, lines 193-828) conforms to the doctrine promulgated by Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Documentum. The integration of the Poetria nova precepts into Troilus and Criseyde I, 1065-71 reflects Chaucer's interest in rhetorical doctrine in general, and in Geoffrey of Vinsauf's in particular.
The contribution of Geoffrey of Vinsauf to the artes poetriae is acknowledged by such distinguished rhetoricians, as John of Garland (ca. 1180 - ca. 1258), a teacher of grammar and literature at the University of Paris, in the Parisiana poetria (known also as De arte prosayca, metrica, et rithmica, written and revised probably between 1220 and 1235), and Eberhard the German in the Laborintus. Geoffrey of Vinsauf is praised by Gervais of Melkley and Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536). Kelly asserts that understanding and appreciation of the writings of the great medieval poets, such as Chaucer, Dante, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Chrétien de Troyes, can only be fully achieved if studied in the light of the instruction contained in treatises like Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova and Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi.
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