Verso de arte mayor (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

for 'verse of higher art', or in short 'arte mayor') refers to a multiform verse that appeared in

Spanish poetry This article concerns poetry in Spain. Medieval Spain The Medieval period covers 400 years of different poetry texts and can be broken up into five categories. Primitive lyrics Since the findings of the Kharjas, which are mainly two, three, ...

from the 14th century and has 9 or more syllables. The term 'verso de arte mayor' is also used for the 'pie de arte mayor', which is a verse composed of two hemistiches, each of which has a rhythmic accent at the beginning and the end, separated by two unstressed syllables. Originally, it was - in contrast to the shorter 'verso de arte menor' (Spanish for 'verse of lower art') – a long verse of eight to 16

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s, which later developed into a regular 12-syllable verse with four stressed syllables and a medial

caesura 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase beg ...

. The verso de arte mayor came to maturity in the 15th century with

Juan de Mena ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. The name is of Hebrew origin and has the meaning "God has been gracious." It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world and in the Phili ...

’s didactical-allegorically epic poem “

Laberinto de Fortuna ''Laberinto'' is the twelfth studio album by Latin Grammy-winning Spanish musician and actor, Miguel Bosé Miguel Bosé (born Luis Miguel Dominguín Bosé; 3 April 1956) is a Spanish-Italian Pop music, pop singer and actor. Early life Bos ...

” (1444). The

couplet In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...

s of this poem, the so-called “Octavas de Juan de Mena”, consisted each of eight arte mayor verses. In the 16th century, the verso de arte mayor gave way to the Italianate

hendecasyllable In poetry, a hendecasyllable (as an adjective, hendecasyllabic) is a line of eleven syllables. The term may refer to several different poetic meters, the older of which are quantitative and used chiefly in classical (Ancient Greek and Latin) poe ...

.Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul Rouzer (eds.). ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics''; 4th ed. Princeton, 2012, p. 86.

Literature

* Julio Saavedra Molina:'' El verso de arte mayor.'' Santiago de Chile 1946 * Martin J. Duffell:'' Modern metrical theory and the verso de arte mayor.'' London, 1999. * Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul Rouzer (ed.). "The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: Fourth Edition." Princeton, 2012.

References

{{Reflist 14th century in Spain Spanish poetry