Retrograde verse explained

Retrograde verse is "poetry that is metrically and syntactically viable when read both forwards and backwards, word by word".^[1]

It is a difficult verse form. There are examples of retrograde verse in Latin from the classical, late antique and medieval periods.^[2] Medieval examples include:

• Centum concito by Oswald the Younger^[2]
• Terrigene bene nunc laudent by Oswald the Younger^[2]
• Book VI of the Quirinalia of Metellus of Tegernsee^[3]
• Tu tibi displiceas^[2]
• Me merito censo minimam^[2]
• Patribus hec omnibus by John of Garland^[2]
• Lebuine confessorum, a 15th-century sequence from the Lebuïnuskerk, Deventer^[2]

See also

• Reversible poem

Further reading

• Flores . Enrico . Giovanni . Polara . Specimina di analisi applicate a strutture di Versspielerei latina . Rendiconti dell'Accademia di archeologia, lettere, e belle arti di Napoli . 45 . 111–136 . 1969.

External links

• Latin Retrograde Verse: Puzzles for the Textual Editor and Literary Historian

Notes and References

1. Leslie Lockett (2016), "Oswald's versus retrogradi: A Forerunner of Post-Conquest Trends in Hexameter Composition", in Rebecca Stephenson and Emily V. Thornbury (eds.), Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (University of Toronto Press), p. 158.
2. Leslie Lockett (2003), "The Composition and Transmission of a Fifteenth-Century Latin Retrograde Sequence Text from Deventer", Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 53(1), p. 118 and n. 67.
3. Daniela Mairhofer, "Germany and Austria", in Francesco Stella, Lucie Doležalová and Danuta Shanzer (eds.), Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond: A Millennium Heritage (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2024), pp. 82–83.