| Publication details: |
Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenchaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. 133.10 (1896), 1-30.rnSnow dates this as 1895, giving publication details as: Mussafia, Adolfo, Sull'antica metrica portoghese (Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch Historische Classe, CXXXIII, Abhandlung 10, Vienna, 1895). 36 pp. Rpt. in A. Mussafia, Scritti di filologia e lingüistica, a cura di Antonio Daniele e Lorenzo Renzi (Padua: Antenore, 1983), 302-40. |
| Commentary: |
Notes from Snow 1977, no. 55: Utilizing the poems of Alfonso, esp. CSM 282, 21, 70, 60, and 115 (and others by King Dinis of Portugal), M. shows that isosyllabic lines in corresponding positions in successive stanzas were acceptable Galician-Portuguese practice, even though this permits the equation of masculine and feminine lines, and thus departs from the more inflexible French Provençal system which counts syllables only up to the final stressed one in the line. For the poems adduced, M. proves his case rather well. However, he is forced to accept that poems with unrhymed lines, whether masculine or feminine in stress, often scan better when the unrhymed lines are conceived of as hemistichs of a longer line. Not only do they scan better, but they then show their isosyllabic nature more clearly. This manner of arranging the poems (not done in the MSS) has been adopted, in the main, with Mettmann's ed. (1959). Mussafia avoids any consideration of compositions which are polymetric as they are not pertinent to his topic. One leaves this study feeling that much more needs to be said." |
