The research work led to progress beyond the state of the art in a twofold way. Concerning the first research line, it suggests a plausible answer to the question of the meaning of rhyme in relation to the poetic language: a question which was so far not only unanswered, but usually not even posed by metrical treatises and specialistic studies on the topic. Much has already been done from a descriptive and philological perspective, which has analysed in detail the metrical schemes generated by rhyme and their historical evolution; however, when it comes to explaining the meaning of these forms and the general function of rhyme, rather than merely discussing their origin and describing their evolution, an evident lack of research and even of interest in scholarship can be observed. Even the most valuable contributions did not go much beyond the analysis of the semantic and, more recently, of the intertextual implications of rhyme: no serious attempt had so far been made to explain the general function of rhyme in poetry and, all the more so, to outline a general theory of rhyme. The results of the project make progress beyond the state of the art in trying to fill this significant gap in relation to the most characteristic formal device of post-classical poetry. The answer to the main question of the general meaning of rhyme, which links rhyme to the rhetorical and figurative elaboration of the poetic text, is the core of a more complex interdisciplinary theory, involving semiotics, music, psychoanalysis, literary history and even philosophy. Hopefully, this new approach will contribute to promote a different way to look at metrical and, more in general, stylistic and formal aspects of literary texts: dealing with them, the first and central question should always be that of their meaning and function in relation to the literary and aesthetic dimension of the text.
The second research line, concerning the quest for the origins of rhyme, may have an even greater impact on scholarship in providing a possible solution to one of the most debated questions in literary studies, that of the origin of vernacular lyric poetry. Rediscovering in early romance poetry a structural relation between the text’s metrical structure (rhyme schemes) and the melodic form (musical phraseology) – which has been so far completely overlooked because it has been hidden by alterations of the melodies due mainly to oral transmission – gives us a potentially decisive clue to trace back rhyme schemes of Troubadour poetry to the Andalusian-Arabic tradition rather than to Medieval Latin poetry, as is generally believed today. This rehabilitates also Dante’s theory of the canzone as exposed in the De vulgari eloquentia, so far considered substantially unreliable for what concerns the relation of the poetic text to the melodic form, and gives an explanation of the function of rhyme and rhyme schemes at the origin of vernacular lyric poetry in close relation to music. Proving the Andalusian-Arabic theory true, besides solving one of the major outstanding literary questions, would also have a wider cultural and social impact, rediscovering a deep connection between Western and Arabic culture even in the field of lyric poetry.
