SOURCE: "The Approach to Romanesque Poetry," in The Romanesque Lyric: Studies in Its Background and Development from Petronius to the Cambridge Songs 50-1050, University of North Carolina Press, 1928, pp. 66-83.

In the following excerpt, Allen examines some of Petronius's poetry, explaining how it breaks with Roman tradition and why some critics have scorned it.

In my preceding narrative I have several times used the phrase Romanesque poetry to describe a certain manner of early European metrical writing.

As so applied, my choice of the word Romanesque is determined by the current application of the same attributive term to transitional types in the history of the fine and decorative arts. When thus employed Romanesque of course specifies "belonging to or designating the early medieval style of art and ornament derived from those of the Roman empire." As hitherto used in the domain of art Romanesque describes mainly that modification...