Cite as: Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 38’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 617.
Stanzas 38-41 illustrate various types of repetition, called epimone (FoGT: epimenon). This figure appears in both the Doctrinale (Reichling 1893, 177-8, ll. 2630-3) and the Graecismus (Wrobel 1887, 5, ll. 34-6). The Graecismus (ibid., 11-12, ll. 3-12) also deals with repetition of single words, as in the FoGT examples, in its chapter on the colours of rhetoric. As Longo (FoGT 2004, 218) has noted, both the Doctrinale and the prose of FoGT emphasise the frequency with which these figures appear in religious writings (theologia). However, FoGT is at pains to align the different kinds of repetition illustrated in sts 38-41 with the indigenous skaldic verse-forms called in SnSt Ht dunhent ‘echoing-rhymed’, iðurmælt ‘repeatedly spoken’ and greppaminni ‘poets’ reminder’, and does so with considerable ingenuity (see Longo 2006b for a detailed analysis). The metre runhent is used in all four stanzas (fornyrðislag Type B).
context: See Introduction to sts 38-41. Stanza 38 illustrates repetition of single words at the beginnings of lines, which the prose text compares to the skaldic verse-form greppaminni ‘poets’ reminder’. Greppaminni, however, as illustrated in SnSt Ht 40, is in dróttkvætt metre and is characterised by a series of questions posed in the first helmingr and answered in the second.
notes: Although each of sts 38-41 is
free-standing, both syntactically and in terms of sense, sts 38 and 41 can be
understood to form an outer semantic envelope, as it were, with their
sentiments only appropriate as the words of Christ to mankind. Stanzas 39 and 40
also belong together in sense and can be read as referring to the properties of
heaven.
texts: ‹FoGT 52›,
‹Gramm 177›
editions: Skj Anonyme digte og vers [XIII]: [C]. D. Religiøse og moraliserende vers af den 4. grammatiske afhandling 14 (AII, 166; BII, 183); Skald II, 95; SnE 1848-87, II, 240-1, FoGT 1884, 147, 291, FoGT 2004, 54, 78, 152-3, FoGT 2014, 42-3, 135.
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