Abstract
Within the long-standing, and yet still lively debate over the origin of Romance poetry in general, and of regular rhyme in particular, one key element appears to have been often overlooked: music. Although it is very well known that Troubadour lyric poems were meant to be sung, their melodic form has so far indisputably been considered to be independent from the formal structure of the texts. However, a radical reconsideration of this common belief, based on a brand-new approach that takes orality into account, leads to the opposite conclusion that regular rhyme schemes, at their origins, were indeed closely related to the musical form of the songs. Linking rhymes to music may therefore represent a potentially decisive argument in the quest for the origin of Romance lyric poetry. For, even if rhymes and rhyme schemes may be found in many different and independent literary traditions, their structural relation to musical form is by far much rarer, hence offering a much more specific hint about the origin of Vernacular lyric forms, which are based on regular rhyme schemes. Tracing this metrical-musical technique back to its roots, may validate once and for all one of the two main theories competing around the origin of Vernacular lyric poetry, namely the Medieval Latin and the Andalusian Arabic theory.
Supported by
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 699899.

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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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- Le Naufrage de la Pucelle de Molinet ou la formulation allégorique d’une crise d’État
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- «Muchas gracias por las felicitaciones a todos. Me habeis emocionado. Les debo una copita»
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- Aspectos tipográficos del anglicismo
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Le Naufrage de la Pucelle de Molinet ou la formulation allégorique d’une crise d’État
- Le rôle de l’ancien français dans le développement du passif indirect en anglais
- Reflexe des christlich-osmanischen Antagonismus in einer nordfranzösischen Chronik des 17. Jahrhunderts
- «Muchas gracias por las felicitaciones a todos. Me habeis emocionado. Les debo una copita»
- Yeísmo in Majorcan Spanish: phonetic variation in a bilingual context
- Aspectos tipográficos del anglicismo
- Ajo y agua y otros acortamientos de frases en el español actual
- Auxiliar-Konstruktionen im llatí medieval katalanischer Urkunden (10.–13. Jh.) und in den Usatici Barchinonae / Usatges de Barcelona (12.–15. Jh.)
- Sull’origine della poesia romanza: ipotesi andalusa e mediolatina alla luce del rapporto fra rima e melodia
- Miszelle
- Ital. eravassimo e altre forme verbali in -vassimo
- Besprechungen
- Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur’s Court in Medieval European Literature, edited by Leah Tether, Johnny McFadyen, Keith Busby and Ad Putter, Boston (Mass.), De Gruyter, 2017, xvi + 546 p.
- Daron Burrows (ed.), The Abingdon Apocalypse (British Library, Add. 24555) (Anglo-Norman Texts, 74), Oxford, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2017), xvi + 169 p.
- Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des epistres du debat sus le “Rommant de la Rose”, edited by Andrea Valentini (Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge, 29), Paris, Garnier Classiques Jaunes, 2016, 381 p.
- Julia Montemayor Gracia, Indigene Sprachen in Mexiko. Eine sprecherzentrierte Studie zur Vitalität des yukatekischen Maya (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 418), Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2017, 605 p.
- Heinz Willi Wittschier, Boccaccios «De mulieribus claris». Einführung und Handbuch (Grundlagen der Italianistik, 17), Frankfurt am Main, Lang, 2017, 562 p.
- Rita Librandi, L’italiano della Chiesa (Bussole, 554), Roma, Carocci, 2017, 126 p.
- Dario Brancato (ed.), Il «Boezio» di Benedetto Varchi. Edizione critica del volgarizzamento della «Consolatio philosophiae» (1551) (Biblioteca di «Lettere Italiane», Studi e Testi, 77), Firenze, Olschki, 2018, 491 p.