. A word or phrase formed by transposing the letters of another word or phrase, anagrams appear in French texts from the mid-13th century and were generally used to identify the poet, the patron, or the poet’s lady. Anagrams can be embedded in specified lines of text or in individual words or phrases. Although poets give instructions for the solution of anagrams, these are sometimes so complicated that the puzzles remain unsolved.
It may be necessary to split letters in half (e.g., forming two i’s from an n) or to invert them (forming a u from an n). Particularly elaborate anagrams appear in the Roman de la Poire, the Bestiaire d’amour rimé, and the works of Guillaume de Machaut and Christine de Pizan. Earlier examples of devices related to the anagram include Jean Renart’s use of wordplay to name himself at the end of the Guillaume de Dole (early 13th c.) and Tristan’s adoption of the pseudonym Tantris in Thomas d’Angleterre’s Roman de Tristan (mid-12th c.). Anagrams reflect delight in the manipulation of the written word, an index of increasing literacy within the aristocratic audience for vernacular poetry.
