Women Trouvères: Just the Same Old Refrains?

Abstract

Efforts to establish the corpus of twelfth- and thirteenth-century lyric works by women have concentrated on the examination of manuscript evidence and the search for rhetorical characteristics that bespeak a “feminine” style. Following the 1979 publication of an article by Bec, in which he argued that female authors, if any ever existed, simply adopted the socio-poetic conventions of their male counterparts, scholars directed their energies, first, toward isolating the arguably “feminine” characteristics of the trobairitzcorpus, and later, toward publishing the body of works that can be credibly attributed to women trouveres. This essay focuses on the use of refrain in the chansons and motets by women trouveres and suggests how examination of narrative voice in dialogic settings and musical structure in polyphonic compositions can yield further evidence of authorship by women, or femininite genetique.