... theorist, Alexander Neckam, who laments that the cuckoo s cry is characterized by useless repetition of the same sound ( frequenti ejusdem sono inutili repetitione See De naturis rerum libri duo, ed. T. Wright (London: Longman, 1863), 117. And it is likely no coincidence that one of the first known...

..., repetitions in all their forms). These obsessive repetitions confer an incantatory power on the text and transfigure the declamation into a real carmen , which must be read as a tremendous metatextual challenge for the rhetor in the literary model of the sorcerer which he aims to surpass. © 2009...