Poche e incerte le notizie biografiche: nativo forse di Colonia, dal 1161 lavorò in Renania al servizio di un alto prelato (forse Rainaldo di Dassel), che seguì nei suoi spostamenti attraverso l'Europa medievale. Fu autore di dieci celebri testi poetici e di una Confessio Goliae in cui descrive sé stesso come un tipico goliarda, anche se la critica recente ha in parte ridimensionato questa sua immagine licenziosa.
Opere
Confessio Goliae
Di lui ci sono rimasti solo dieci testi poetici:
I: Lingua balbus, hebes ingenio
II: Fama tuba dante sonum
III: Omnia tempus habent
IV: Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis
V: Nocte quadam sabbati somno iam refectus
VI: En habeo versus te precipiente reversus
VII: Archicancellarie, viris maior ceteris
VIII: Presul urbis Agripine
IX: Salve, mundi domine, Cesar noster, ave!
X: Estuans intrinsecus ira vehementi
Nella cultura di massa
L'Archipoeta compare come personaggio nel romanzo Baudolino di Umberto Eco, dietro lo pseudonimo di "Poeta".
Bibliografia
Edizioni e traduzioni
Fleur Adcock (a cura di), Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, Cambridge Medieval Classics, vol.2, 1st, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN0-521-39546-1. URL consultato il 5 agosto 2010. (Preview available on Google Books)
(FR) Carmina Burana, 1st, Paris, Imprimerie nationale Éditions, coll. La Salamandre, 1995, ISBN2-7433-0000-0.
Studi
Francis Cairns, The Archpoet's Confession, in Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch, vol.10, 1975, pp.100-105.
Francis Cairns, The Archpoet's Confession: Sources, Interpretation and Historical Context, in Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch, vol.15, 1980, pp.87-103.
Francis Cairns, The Archpoet's 'Jonah-Confession' (Poem II): Literary, Exegetical, and Historical Aspects, in Mittelateinisches Jahrbuch, vol.18, 1983, pp.168-193.
Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, 1st, London, Hutchinson University Library, 1968.
Re-edition: Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, Reprint of 1996's 3rd, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2002, ISBN0-85991-484-4. (Preview available on Google Books)
(EN,FR) Peter Dronke, The Medieval Poet and His World, Raccolta di Studi e Testi, vol.164, 1st, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1984. (Preview available on Google Books)
Peter Dronke, The Archpoet and the Classics, in Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition. Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1st, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp.57-72, ISBN0-19-920174-9.
Re-edition: Peter Dronke, The Archpoet and the Classics, in Sources of Inspiration: Studies in Literary Transformations, 400–1500, Raccolta di Studi e Testi, vol.196, 1st, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997, pp.83-100. (Preview available on Google Books)
James Hardin e Hasty Will (a cura di), The Archpoet, in Dictionary of Literary Biography: German Writers and Works of the Early Middle Ages: 800–1170, vol.148, 1st, Gale, dicembre 1994, pp.8-9, ISBN978-0-8103-5709-9. URL consultato il 24 maggio 2011.
William Thomas Hobdell Jackson, Introduction, in The Interpretation of Medieval Lyric Poetry, 1st, New York & London, Columbia University Press & Macmillan, 1980, pp.1–21, ISBN0-333-24816-3.
Priscilla Ann Miner, Tradition and originality in the extant poems of the Archpoet, Berkeley, University of California, 1960.
Joseph Pucci, Job and Ovid in the Archpoet's Confession, in Classica et Mediaevalia, vol.40, Copenhagen S, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1989, pp.235-250, ISSN0106-5815(WC· ACNP).
Rebecca E. Sammel, Carnival Confession: The Archpoet and Chaucer's Pardoner, in Müller (a cura di), Parody: Dimensions and Perspectives, Rodopi Perspectives on Modern Literature, 1st, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1997, pp.169-190, ISBN90-420-0181-X. (Preview available on Google Books)
Re-edition: Helen Waddell, Chapter VII: The Archpoet, in The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages, Reprint of 1936's 6th, Mineola, Dover Publications, 2000 [1927], pp.161-176, ISBN0-486-41436-1.
Peter Dronke, Le antologie liriche del Medioevo latino, in Forms and Imaginings: From Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century, Raccolta di Studi e Testi, vol.243, 1st, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, luglio 2007, pp.129-144, ISBN978-88-8498-371-8. (Preview available on Google Books)
Archpoet, in Key Figures in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, Sandra Clayton-Emmerson, Associate Editor, Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, 1st, New York, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2006, p.44, ISBN0-415-97385-6. (Preview available on Google Books)
Archpoet, in Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, 1st, New York, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, gennaio 2001, pp.21–22, ISBN0-8240-7644-3. (Preview available on Google Books)
Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching, Fourth reprint of 1987's, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2004 [1972], ISBN0-8020-6665-8.