ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the chief importance of the long Documentum lies in its attempt to join the ars dictaminis—the art of composing correct and decorous prose, chiefly in letters—and the ars poetriae in a unified, and comprehensive art of written discourse. Geoffrey of Vinsauf is famous as the premier exponent of the medieval art of poetry. During the second quarter of the fifteenth century, a generation after Merke composed the Formula, another English teacher constructed a composition textbook from a work by Geoffrey of Vinsauf, this time from the long Documentum. The Candelabrum, for all its comprehensiveness, stops short of the synthesis of ars dictaminis and ars poetriae that characterizes the long Documentum. The strong association between oral disputatio and the remaining member of the trivium, the ars dialectica, probably reinforced the perception of grammar and rhetoric as sister arts of written discourse.
