f “De re metrica: Regarding the Libro de Alexandre and Bercean Corpus”

The present article considers several variable elements within the regular versification of two major vehicles of cuaderna vía poetry: the Libro de Alexandre and the corpus of works ascribed to Gonzalo de Berceo. The use and scansion of Latin is first discussed, a discussion which then broadens into the much wider field of the use of dieresis as both a Latinate inflexion of the vernacular and as a representation of contemporary pronunciation. The shortenting of word-endings, often seen as characteristic of the thirteenth century, is approached through a division of such shortening into ecthlipsis (or the loss of one of two contiguous vowels in different words, such as "todo'l mundo", as repeatedly found in the Alexandre), and apocopation (where the vowel is lost before a word beginning with a consonant, such as "est' conseio"). Rather than immediately taking an overall view of the use of word shortening in the poems, the occurrence of individual words is studied and their frequency analysed, with words grouped according to their dominant use as a part of speech. The results show a trend of gradual change within the Alexandre, thus arguing for a single author over a long period of time; and some significant variation in the Bercean corpus, which would suggest a multiplicity of authors.