ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents

G. Cook's translations fron "The Miscellanea of Venantius Fortunatus" is introduced by Dick Higgins who describes Fortunatus as "perhaps the greatest master of Christian poetry." Included in the book are six examples of emblem or shaped poems from the sixth century. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is a Ph.D. thesis whose purpose was to trace the appearance of shapes in English poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries. Church found that the pattern poetry had its origins in Greek and Hindi literature. Greek literature contains six examples of pattern poetry: an axe, an egg, a pair of wings, a shepard's pipe, and two alters. Church defines Carmina Quadrata as verses that contain as many lines as each line contains letters. Within these boxlike poems are acrostics, telestichs, and many pictures and designs. The pictures are formed by either capitalizing the letters which outline the figure or by writing them in inks of various colors. Quincunx are poems arranged in oblique lines that can be read from either the upper or lower levels to make sense with either choice (p.51). Pattern poems reached the Anglo-Saxon literature in the 8th century. Alcuin of York wrote two Carmina Quadrata addressed to the cross. Hrabamus Maurus was one of Alcuin's followers. In 1573, pattern poetry...