By THLaird Colyne Stewart, for the Trillium War School AS 51
(2016)
General Background Information on Debate Poetry
Various scholars have differing opinions on just what
qualifies as a “true” debate poem, but for the purposes of this class a debate
poem is any poem wherein two or more different points of view expound on a
topic (two or three being the most common). The points of view in debate poetry
are expressed by speakers which can be almost anything, including people,
inanimate objects, personifications (of emotions, seasons, etc.), or religious
figures. Popular pairings were the body and the soul, as well as various avians
(the nightingale was used a lot). Medieval people tended to think in binary (as
many people still do today), with everything having a polar opposite. This way
of thinking fits the debate model very well. If there was a third voice it was
often a judge who had been invoked to choose a winner of the debate.
Debate poetry has its roots in the Greek and Roman eclogue.
Eclogues were short passages of any genre, including longer poetic works.
Ancient writers such as Theocritus (3rd century BCE), Virgil, Ovid,
Nemesianus, Calpurnius Siculus all wrote eclogues that would have been
available to medieval readers.
Debate poems first appeared in Medieval European literature
in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Carolingian
Renassaince but reached the height of their popularity from the 12th
to the 16th.
Debate poems were written in Latin to begin with. However,
in the 13th century they began to appear in several vernacular
languages including English, French, Italian and German.
The subject of love in these debates was very popular from
the 12th to 15th centuries. Other topics will be
discussed below.
