Page:The gloria d'amor of Fra Rocabertí (1916).djvu/8

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viii
PREFACE

confined myself to editing the most important of the longer poems contained therein, namely, the Gloria d'Amor of Fra Rocabertí.

In the present edition I have endeavored, in the Introduction, Notes and Glossary, not only to utilize all that has thus far been printed concerning Rocabertí and his poem, but also to bring to bear upon the elucidation of the subject the results of my own investigations. It cannot, of course, be asserted that I have exhausted the available sources. On the other hand I have felt induced, particularly concerning the life of Rocabertí, to make a number of conjectures which I might perhaps have been able to verify or to disprove had I had an opportunity to make further investigations in Barcelona and elsewhere in Europe.

For the convenience of those who may be interested in the Gloria d'Amor from the point of view of comparative literature but who do not possess a reading knowledge of Catalan, I have included in the present edition a detailed analysis of the poem. And here I take the occasion to state that the interpretation of the text has in a few passages presented difficulties which are partly reflected in my analysis.

It was originally my intention to include also a brief study of the Catalan language of the fifteenth century, but I have deferred the prosecution of this part of my plan to a later date, when further study of the language will have aided me, I trust, in solving certain of its problems. For the present this deficiency is partly compensated by the complete glossary which accompanies this edition.

In the printing of the text I have adopted approximately the system used by Amédée Pagès in his recent edition of the works of Auzias March. I have modernized the text only to the extent of introducing punctuation marks, capitalizing all proper nouns, and standardizing