A Flea the Size of Paris

Download or read book A Flea the Size of Paris written by Donato Mancini and published by Black Widow Press. This book was released on 2020-01-05 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bi-lingual volume presents translations of 100 poems from medieval France. 64 of the poems are in a form known as the "fatrasie." The rest are in a form called the "fatras," apparently derived from the fatrasie. Innovative, fresh, beguiling and hilarious even today, they have never before been translated into English. The fatrasies have come down in two groups. The earliest is a suite of 11 poems by Phillipe de Beaumanoir, composed around 1296. The larger group of 54 poems was composed in the city of Arras before 1315. Unsigned, the fatrasies d'Arras, as they are called, are found in only a single manuscript in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal. Of the surviving fatras, 30 are by the court poet Watriquet de Couvin, possibly co-written with a man named Rainmondin. Watriquet and Rainmondin performed their fatras for Phillippe IV of France, sometime between 1319 and 1329. Of the fatrasies' reception even less is known, except that Arras had a municipal tradition of poetry competitions for which they may have been written.