poetryn.

Etymology: < (i) Anglo-Norman poeitrie treatise on the art of poetry (1212 or earlier) and Middle French poetrie, poétrie, poeterie art of poetic expression (1270 in Old French; French †poétrie , in this sense only), works of canonical poets, hence ‘classical mythology’ (1357), poetic style (c1400 as poterie ), the fact of writing in verse (end of the 15th cent.), work of literature in verse (1507), and its etymon (ii) post-classical Latin poetria (see note below) < classical Latin poēta poet n. Compare Catalan poetria imaginative literature (14th cent.), Spanish poetría imaginative literature, book of verse (c1280), art of poetry (1379), Italian †poetria art of poetry (1288).Post-classical Latin poetria occurs in some 9th-cent. manuscripts of Martianus Capella 8. 809 (e.g. Par. 8669), and in the commentary of Remigius of Auxerre (late 9th cent.); a number of manuscripts of Capella of the same century have potetria , from which J. Willis has suggested in his edition (Teubner, 1983) that the reading in the archetype may have been poeetria . Another very early occurrence is in the Expositiones in hierarchiam caelestem of Johannes Scotus Eriugena (d. 877), who had studied Martianus. The form occurs in 10th-cent. manuscripts of scholia on Horace, Epistles 2. 1. 103 and 111 ( Pseudo-Acronis scholia in Horatium vetustiora, ed. O. Keller (1902-4), 2.286-7); although the latter transmit a 7th-cent. recension of the scholia on Horace, this kind of text is susceptible to accretions and modifications, so the form poetria cannot itself be safely dated to the 7th cent. A 9th-10th cent. manuscript of Horace (Par. 10310) refers to his Ars poetica as liber..de arte poetriae , and it was with allusion to Horace's poem that the influential rhymed treatise on poetry composed c1208–13 by Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Galfridus de Vino Salvo, also called Galfridus Anglicus) was called Poetria nova (compare sense 4); other 13th-cent. texts which use the form poetria to mean ‘art of poetry’ may allude directly to Horace or, perhaps more usually, to Geoffrey's poem. For a direct reference to Geoffrey, compare quot. 1447 at sense 4. Compare poetics n.. The relation of the post-classical Latin word to classical Latin poētria , Hellenistic Greek ποιήτρια poetess (see poetress n.), is not clear; but its suffix cannot be identified with French -erie or -ery suffix, -ry suffix. Some of the earliest English examples are from Chaucer, to whom the Nova Poetria of Geoffrey was well known. He makes the Nun's Priest refer to it in his Tale:c1390 G. Chaucer Nun's Priest's Tale 4537 O Gaufred, deere maister souerayn. The sense development of English poetry is partly shared by French poésie poesy n. With sense 2e in particular compare the lengthy and influential definition of French poésie by d'Alembert (1765, in Encyclopédie XII 837–8).