Figures of Grammar and Rhetoric in Las Leys d'Amors

Abstract

FIGURES OF GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC IN LAS LEYS D 'AMORS* 12 avril 1912. L'Expertise et la collection. Réunir des objets qui parfois n'ont qu'une qualité qui est de différer légèrement entre eux est encore un hommage,- grossier parfois - rendu à la Différence. Le collectionneur croit vulgairement, ou est cru, réunir un lot de« semblables » ou analogues pièces... Quelle erreur! C'est dans la Différence que gît tout l'intérêt. Plus la Différence est fine, indiscernable, plus s'éveille et s'aiguise le sens du Divers. Rouge et vert? Que non pas! Rouge et rougeâtre, puis rouge et rouge avec un divisionnisme sans limite. L'agglomération des objets facilite le jugement qui les « discerne », le « discernement ». Toute série, toute gradation, toute comparaison engendre la variété, la diversité. Séparés, les objets semblaient vaguement semblables, homogènes; réunis, ils s'opposent ou du moins « existent » avec d'autant plus de force que la matière, plus riche et plus souple, a davantage de moyens et de modalités nuancées. Victor Segalen, Essai sur l 'exotisme (60-61) 1. In Memoriam trobadors What became of Provençal poetry after the trobar died? How were the remains of troubadour achievements recorded by their immediate followers, long before they came to be remembered as the founding fathers ofthe European lyric? The critics differ in their interpretation of the details, but they agree that the second halfofthe 13th century marks the end ofthe troubadour experience, or, in Jacques Roubaud's words, ofthe "moment ofthe troubadours" (Ie moment des troubadours).1 JUSTINE LANDAU According to Roubaud, this particular "moment" was contingent on a specific time, place, and object: that characteristic ofthe trobar, in Provence, around die year 1230. Those Provençal poets, like Guiraut Riquier or Guilhem de Montanhagol, who came after the main song-books (chansonniers) had been collected and whose works reflect a consciousness of being after their time, either to regret it ortojustifyit, can be identified as "troubadours de Yaprès"; for, to quote Roubaud, "the advent ofthese survivors ofacatastrophe in the manuscripts shows that the trobar is over" (132-133).2 In Roubaud's terms, the end oftroubadour poetry is rather an abrupt and a radical one: "it is of little interest, he writes, to speak of 'decadence.' But this is what happens: time recovers, or acquires momentum. The moment of the troubadours ceases" (335). If it does not sufficeto explain it, a socio-political approachofthe history ofthe troubadours indicates that the demise of trobar followed the destruction ofthe courtly circles in which it had developed. With the Albigensian crusade, the French invasion, and the persecution of the Cathars by the Inquisition, there also developed a condemnation ofthe poets'Amor. The fact is thatthe laterProvençal poets do not sing oflove anymore; they sing about love, following the one path left to them, which allows for a moral or religious reading. Except for its satellite transfer to Catalonia for another half-century, the only possible trobar left was modeled after the virtues ofchastity; the praise ofthe Dona was replaced by that of the Virgin Mary. Much earlier in the 20th century, a record of the same evolution had lead Alfred Jeanroy to formulate a more ruthless judgement on the late troubadours' achievements, in his compendium, La Poésie lyrique des troubadours. He clearly considers their sophistication ofform in terms ofaffectedness, and the Christian trend of their contents in terms of "mediocrity," of "didacticmania," andeventually, throughthe "invasion ofpedantic jargon," of "decadence." Above all, he identifies the death of troubadour poetry with the loss ofits idiom. On the one hand, he observes in 14*-century Provence, quoting Paul Meyer, a "literary FIGURES OF GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC evolution inclined towards French, and [that] was soon to be in French."3 In the courts ofAragon and Catalonia, on the other hand, a process ofdialectization leads the poetic tongue to meet, '"through insensible degradations, the local idiom."1 Accordingly, the inauguration of an academic Consistory of poetry in Toulouse in the middle of the 14th century, and the subsequent drafting of a treatise to settle the grammatical...