L'étrange aventure d'un faux muet : blessures symboliques et performances sexuelles dans un poème de Guillaume IX d'Aquitaine

Abstract

William IX of Aquitaine's fifth song, Farai un vers, pos mi sonelh, has traditionally been regarded as belonging to his so-called «sensual» poems, and either thought of as tasteless and daring when not plainly obscene or else as a "pleasant piece of brag, very much in the eighteenth century manner". Let's remember though that Friedrich Diez used to relate that poem to a former folktale tradition (Volksmärchen). I think, on account of its closely linking up sexuality, blood and symbolic death, that it tells of a test such as are typically found in coming-of-age rites. Even though William set up such an experience within the social and literary framework of the early twelfth century, his poem nevertheless retains memories of an ancient cultural stock that long remained impervious to history.