The Poetics of Love in Prosimetra across the Medieval Mediterranean

Abstract

Written as prose began to garner attention in literary cultures that had long privileged poetic composition, prosimetra offer a unique perspective on what authors in eleventh-century al-Andalus and thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spain and Italy singled out as the special capabilities of poetry. Further, as the only shared theme across mixed-form texts in Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish, love acts as a go-between across these varied literary traditions.