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The Phenomenology of Improvisation: Ethics and Aesthetics the Case of the ‘Ottava Rima’

Most modern theories as to ‘composition during performance’ in oral poetry have been drawn upon case studies of ‘narrative’ rather than ‘extemporaneous’ poetry proper. Yet, extemporaneous poetry happens to be a very well defined branch of the poetic art, of which the ‘ottava rima’, currently practiced across central Italy by scores of ‘peasant poets’, is an outstanding time-honoured example. After having briefly described the circumstances and the context of the extemporaneous performances, the ethics of its practitioners, and the complex aesthetic values which are attached to the ‘octave’, we turn to discuss conflicting theoretical perspectives. On the one hand the octave has suffered from the disdain shown by modern literary poetry towards all extemporised poetry. On the other hand, mechanistic notions, that envisage behind the process of poetic composition the combination of pre-fixed building blocks or ‘formulae’, albeit put forward with varying success in the field of folk epics, do not seem to be particularly relevant to extemporaneous poetry proper.