Scope and Contents

This is a survey of medieval, Latin shaped poetry with critical text. Several pages by Rabano Mauro (Hrabamus Maurus) are reproduced from a book that is also held by the Sackner Archive. The marginata was inserted by Dick Higgins, the previous owner of this book. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents Although his inscription alludes to a second edition, this was not meant to be. In this first edition, first printing, Higgins tells the history of pattern poetry, documenting more than 2000 works. He divides the book by chapters such as Language and Literature, e.g., Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch and Flemish, British, Hispanic, Polish, and Slavic. He also has a chapter on Languages outside European such as Far East, Citrakavyas and other Indian languages, Islamic, and Languages in which no pattern poetry has been reported. In another chapter, he descibes Acrostics, Telestics, Mesostics, Lapidary Inscriptions, Leonine Verse, Magical Inscriptions and Formulae, Mathematical Arrays and Poems, Musical Analogues of Pattern Poetry, Proteus Poems, Rebuses, Shaped Prose, and Sound Poetry. De. Herbert Francke contributes a chapter on Chinese Pattern Texts and Dr. Kalanath Jha on Sandscrit Citrakavyas. Higgins' glossary of terms follows...