Troubadour Research Articles

Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century by Sarah Kay (review)

ll8ARTHURIANA compellingdiscussion ofilluminated Insular Gospel books argues for their distance from Continental models: for rhe newly-literate Irish andAnglo-Saxons, she insists, the Latin Scriptures were exotic, mystically charged visual webs of signs that celebrated 'beyond all words, the central mysteryofdieWord' (279). Susan Youngss detailed analysis of an Irish gilt-bronze mount found in Kent enlarges our understanding ofViking trade in the ninth and tendi centuries. With hisdiscussionofRomanesque art, Peter Harbisonventures into the relatively uncharted territory ofpost-conquest Irish art. Although Cormac's Chapel is now recognized as the earliest example of the Romanesque style in Ireland, Harbison concludes that while borrowing some Romanesque features, twelfth-century adaptations on crosses, metal croziers and shrines remained distinctively Irish and tied to older Celtic models. Tessa Garten's study of human and animal heads in Irish Romanesque sculpture reaches similar conclusions: the Irish adopted the Romanesque style, but infused it with Celtic and Viking features. Susanne McNab stresses thelongevityofancient motifslike the non-realistic interlacedhuman figures, serpents and disembodied heads in much later Irish Romanesque art. The discussion also extends to later periods. Raghnall Ó Floinn examines Irish Gothic metalwork, particularly reliquaries and seals, after the Norman conquest. Heather King's discussion of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century stone crosses demonstrates the importance ofEuropean influences on Irish crosses ofthis period. Maggie McEnchroc Williams's article on the Market Cross atTuam is a fascinating look at how nineteenth-century Irish nationalism influenced perceptions ofa cross 'reconstructed' from disparate medieval pans and displayed at the 1853 Dublin exhibition before being moved toTuam. Catherine Karkov's fresh lookat the sheelana -gigs of post-conquest Ireland sheds important new light on these enigmatic female figures and their interpretation throughout Ireland's post-colonial past. The excellent scholarship here is complemented by a thorough index and an attractive layout. From Irebnd Coming opens up exciting new vistas on the Irish artistic tradition and is sure to stimulate future discussion. JOANNE FINDON Trent University Sarah KAY, Courtly Contradictions: TheEmergence oftheLiterary Objectin the Twelfth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 380. isbn: c—8047-30792 . $55. With this book, Sarah Kay, one of the foremost contemporary authorities on troubadour poetry, widens her scope to include other forms ofmedieval literature as well. She traces the development and interaction in the twelfth century ofthree major genres, vernacular lyric, courtly romance, and hagiography, all of which cultivate a rhetoric ofparadox and opposition. The emerging 'literary object' ofher title does not mean only die courtly beloved, the object ofthe lover's desire, but also the literary artifact itself, the very texts under examination which escape from medieval didacticism so as to offer themselves as pure pleasure and entertainment. REVIEWS119 Her subject is, then, the ascendance of courtly literature, and she observes rhat contradictoriness is central to its makeup. Rather than concentratingon the influence ofthe scholasticscience oflogicor 'dialectic' on literature, however (asubject much explored byother critics), Kaytraces rhe interpénétration ofthe religious and secular genres. She points out that unlike Aristotle's medieval followers, who respected the principle of non-contradiction, religious writers in the Neoplatonist tradition considered certain paradoxes acceptable and, indeed, foundational. Courtlywriters, too, not only flouted the rules of dialectical argument, but founded their fictions onwhat Leo Spitzer called theparadoxeamoureuse, that ofwillingly renouncing the object ofone's desire. In rhe second half of rhe book especially she turns to modern French 'theory,' and Lacanian psychoanalysis in particular, to make sense ofthe texts'willful insistence on contradictoriness. In part this is because she sees a tellingcorrespondence between the texts' riddling language and Lacan's similarly enigmatic reflections, but more generally because—although she does not put it this way—as literary artifacts, the objects of her analysis necessarily reflect the structure of mind. She cites Lacan as suggesting that the erotic configurations of medieval courtly love poetry had an especiallydecisive influence on modern subjectivity, and repeatedlyasks (I paraphrase here): whydo we still find these texts absorbing? what can they tell us about ourselves today? Lacan asserted that the truth as he described it had the structure offiction. The courtly fictions that she describes seem to have the nature of self-fulfilling truths. The book's first three chapters describe the interaction between...

Review: Between Sequence and Sirvantes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric

Journal Article Review: Between Sequence and Sirvantes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric Get access Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2003, Page 107, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/39.1.107 Published: 01 January 2003

"Cobras e Son." Papers on the Text, Music, and Manuscripts of the 'Cantigas de Santa Maria'

Cobras e Son. Papers on the Text, Music, and Manuscripts of the 'Cantigas de Santa Maria.' Ed. Stephen Parkinson. Oxford, England: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. 246 pages. This handsome set of essays sprang from a Colloquium held at Oxford in 1994 and contains papers and discussions from that productive gathering. The authors revised and expanded their studies in the intervening years, producing one of the most thoughtful and studious anthologies of work on the four extant Cantigas manuscripts to date. A persistent thread of Cantigas research over the years is their assessment within diverse critical contexts and historical camps. Does the music represent true Spanish folk melodies that grew up with romance vernacular songs, are they commingled with Hispanoarabic rhythmic patterns, or do they perhaps anticipate aspects of French troubadour music? Does the participation of Moorish and Jewish musicians among the European performers shown in the illustrations and documented for at least post-- Alfonsine times, support those theses? Does the use of Galician-Portuguese hint at any sort of detachment from content, an artificiality that makes the lyrics ring true only for aesthetes and prevents their penetration into the common culture of the masses? On the flip side of the coin, did the Cantigas' perceived popular style (use of refrains, folk melodies, links to dance, etc.) lower their potential prestige among Europeans outside of Iberia? Although the physical books themselves were manufactured and illustrated by Christian artisans, do their realistic depictions hint at native Iberian experiences at odds with the formalisms of the lyrics or music? How much are the miniatures influenced by foreign models, how much originality do they display, and to what extent is that inventiveness an accidental byproduct of the absence of formal precedents for illustrating these story poems? The essays in this anthology probe these and many other questions, and even entertain the possibility that all the extent copies of the Cantigas were produced after Alfonso's death, perhaps well into the fourteenth century. Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, returns to the polarized debate about Arabic features using recently published hispanoarabic songs that survive with their musical notion to argue that an independent Andalusian stamp cannot be dismissed. Mary O'Neill, in Problems of Genre Definition: the Cantigas de Santa Maria in the Context of the Romance Lyric Tradition, points out how the very multi-culturalism inherent within these lyrics and the internationalism of their settings may have militated against earning them the stature they deserve vis-d-vis songs linked to modern nation states, specifically the troubadour lyrics of France. …

The Poetics of Nullity: “Nonsense” Verses of William of Aquitaine, Jaufre Rudel, and Raimbaut D’Orange

“The Poetics of Nullity: ‘Nonsense’ Verses of William of Aquitaine, Jaufre Rudel, and Raimbaut D’Orange.” William of Aquitaine’s riddle poem “Farai un vers de dreit nien” opens the Old Occitan lyric tradition with the provocative concept of a poem about nothing at all. William’s vers invites metapoetic discussion, and in fact inspires a series of poetic replies, including Jaufre Rudel’s “No sap chantar qui so non di” and Raimbaut d’Orange’s “Escotatz, mas no sai que s’es.” In their responses to William’s vers , Jaufre and Raimbaut express their own opinions on the art of trobar . Jaufre privileges the musical component of the troubadour’s art, while Raimbaut exaggerates its formal aspects. Jaufre and Raimbaut’s compositions form part of a new tradition of metapoetic debate that reflects the still fluid parameters of troubadour poetry during the first three generations of troubadour poets. Their compositions thus constitute a canon as paradoxical as William’s originating vers de dreit nien , managing to render canonical the very question of poetic canon.

Review: Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric

Review: Between Sequence and Sirventes: Aspects of Parody in the Troubadour Lyric

American troubadours: groundbreaking singer-songwriters of the '60s

American troubadours: groundbreaking singer-songwriters of the '60s

RHYMES AND 'RUSTY WORDS' IN MARCABRU'S SONGS

This article explores a selection of issues concerning troubadour versification which are the products of insights gained in the course of preparing the new critical edition of the works of Marcabru. The manuscript evidence and editorial interpretation of this suggest that some pieces in the corpus of this poet's surviving songs contain irregularities in the quality, position and sequence of rhymes, features which flout the normative versificatory practice usually associated with the troubadour lyric. It is argued that these irregularities are authorial. At the same time, other compositions, though employing common rhyme-schemes, show evidence of the early use of complex metrical devices deployed by the poet to ensure a perfectly accurate rhyme-sound. Two pieces which feature a large number of instances of two rare rhyme-sounds are analysed in detail for the light they shed on the lexical range and resources exploited by Marcabru and on the self-conscious technical mastery of this poet. (The full texts and an English translation of these songs are given in an appendix.) It is suggested that Marcabru is both a more casual and a more accomplished rhymester than has generally been recognized.

Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe ed. by Michael A. Signer, John Van Engen (review)

REVIEWS 205 she sets herself. She must find ways to prove that these written sequences consciously (and the imbuing of intention is key here) develop an authorial subjectivity that becomes identified with the “I” of the poems themselves. In the cases of Dante and Petrarch, whom Holmes discusses toward the end of the book, making this argument is less daunting for historical and structural as well as thematic reasons. For earlier poets such as Uc de Saint Circ, Guittone d’Arezzo, or Rustico Fillippi, let alone for “anonymous,” Holmes’s claims of authorial intent become much more difficult to defend. As a result, Holmes relies upon lexical and thematic connections among poems, along with biographical information that she then corroborates through references within the sequences themselves. Because she only rarely provides any poem in its entirety , these discussions seem pedantic and fragmented. Holmes also tends to summarize rather than analyze the poetry in order to support her more general claims for cohesive narratives and subjectivities. The results are long descriptive passages that provide broad generic readings of the sequences’ narratives and, at the same time, close readings focusing on repeated words and phrases in poems to which the reader never has access. Instead of proving that these poets construct identities one gets the distinct sense that Holmes is constructing them herself rather than letting the poet and the poetry speak of and for themselves. An investigation of authorial subjectivity is no mean feat. And the question of when a sense of “self” first arises, at least as we currently understand it, is the topic of lively and extensive debate among historians, critics, and philosophers . Holmes may be right in her claim that the concept of the “author” as a distinctive and constructed “self” emerges in late troubadour poetry, and that the very concept of the poetic sequence, when determined by the poet himself, serves as proof of this identity. Unfortunately, both the nature of these texts (the variants in sequencing, for example, or additions to or omissions from various manuscripts) and the more contemporary question of theoretical vocabulary get in the way of Holmes’s argument. While Holmes succeeds in her goal of emphasizing continuity in the development of lyric sequence, her greater claim, that “the advent of historical selfhood” coincides with “the construction of the modern figure of the author in lyric sequences” (3) prompts more disputation than resolution. CHERYL GOLDSTEIN, Comparative Literature, UCLA Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen, Notre Dame Conferences in Medieval Studies 10 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2001) xi + 380 pp., illus., maps. How does a medievalist determine the importance of religion in the development of medieval social history? On the one hand the answer to this would seem obvious. Since there was no “secular” society, the Middle Ages exist as a “religious” culture, that is to say a culture that is bound up and identified with religious institutions. (This identification should be distinguished from “religiosity ” which deals specifically with individual praxis and devotion rather than hegemony.) On the other hand, however, there is a certain kind of transparency in many historical accounts, a taking for granted of the significance of religious identity in medieval Europe. This becomes clear when one realizes that Jewish medieval history is separate from discussions of medieval history in general, a REVIEWS 206 formulation that takes Christianity as so thoroughly normative that we need not even speak its name. For the last decade or so some Jewish medievalists have found evidence in texts about the First Crusade in 1096 written by JewishGerman pietists (Hasidei Askenaz), for example, of what might be described as a “cross-pollination” of religious cultures. Analyses of these texts suggest significant levels of cultural interchange between medieval Jews and Christians, a kind of sotto voce dialogue of identity and power. Interest in this religious dialectic was certainly one of the factors that led to the conference at Notre Dame University and culminated in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, edited by Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen. The essays reflect what Van Engen describes as a relationship of “intimacy and distance...

The Troubadours: An Introduction

Preface: How to use this book Introduction Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay 1. Courtly culture in medieval Occitania Ruth Harvey 2. Fin' amor and the development of the courtly canso Linda Paterson 3. Moral and satirical poetry Catherine Leglu 4. Early troubadours: Guilhem IX to Bernart de Ventadorn Stephen G. Nichols 5. The classical period: Raimbaut d'Aurenga to Arnaut Daniel Gerard Gouiran 6. Later troubadours Michael Routledge 7. The trobairitz Tilde Sankovitch 8. Italian and Catalan troubadours Miriam Cabre 9. Music and versification Margaret Switten 10. Rhetoric and hermeneutics Sarah Spence 11. Intertextuality and dialogism in the troubadours Maria Luisa Meneghetti 12. The troubadours at play: irony, parody and burlesque Don Monson 13. Desire and subjectivity Sarah Kay 14. Orality and writing: the text of the troubadour poem Simon Gaunt 15 The Chansonniers as books William Burgwinkle 16. Troubadour lyric and Old French narrative Sylvia Huot Appendices Bibliography.

The Troubadours: An Introduction

Preface: How to use this book Introduction Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay 1. Courtly culture in medieval Occitania Ruth Harvey 2. Fin' amor and the development of the courtly canso Linda Paterson 3. Moral and satirical poetry Catherine Leglu 4. Early troubadours: Guilhem IX to Bernart de Ventadorn Stephen G. Nichols 5. The classical period: Raimbaut d'Aurenga to Arnaut Daniel Gerard Gouiran 6. Later troubadours Michael Routledge 7. The trobairitz Tilde Sankovitch 8. Italian and Catalan troubadours Miriam Cabre 9. Music and versification Margaret Switten 10. Rhetoric and hermeneutics Sarah Spence 11. Intertextuality and dialogism in the troubadours Maria Luisa Meneghetti 12. The troubadours at play: irony, parody and burlesque Don Monson 13. Desire and subjectivity Sarah Kay 14. Orality and writing: the text of the troubadour poem Simon Gaunt 15 The Chansonniers as books William Burgwinkle 16. Troubadour lyric and Old French narrative Sylvia Huot Appendices Bibliography.

Mathematical Bodies and Fuzzy Logic in the Couplings of Troubadour Lyric

Mathematical Bodies and Fuzzy Logic in the Couplings of Troubadour Lyric

Lecture d''Erec': Traces épiques et troubadouresques dans le conte de Chrétien de Troyes by Claudia Seebass-Linggi (review)

Claudia SEEBASS-LINGGI, Lecture d'Erec: Traces épiques et troubadouresques dans le contede Chrétien de Troyes. Publications Universitaires Européennes: SérieXIII, Langue et littérature françaises 211. Bern: Peter Lang, 1996. Pp. 295. isbn: 3-906756-09-2. $52.95. The point ofdeparture for this study ofErec is the author's conviction that important relationships exist between Chretien's first romance and the chansons de geste and troubadour lyrics. (Owing to space limitations, this review will concentrate largely on the chanson de geste section). By studying those relationships, Seebass-Linggi hopes to demonstrate that Chretien's conception ofhis character and ofhis chivalric exploits is ironic or 'souriante.' In the process, she offers close and careful analyses, frequently calling our attention to unusual uses of particular words and formulas and to narrative details often overlooked by other critics. Despite the care ofher readings, the book is less than entirely satisfactory. SeebassLinggi considers it important to begin by studying the thirteenth-century Prose Erec (a largely unrelated text, though devoted to Erec) in order to provide an interpretive key to its predecessor. Accordingly, noting that the hero ofthe later romance is 'un chevalier obscur, attaché excessivement au code chevaleresque,' she concludes (19) that the prose author must be magnifying negative characteristics already present, though not necessarily visible, in Chrétien. In both principle and practice, I find it hard to accept the reliability ofthe later romance as an index to the earlier one. Ifthe idea Seebass-Linngi is seeking is in Chrétien, there is no need to seek confirmation in the later text; ifit is not there, reading back from the prose romance cannot make it appear. Even if we concur with her reading, the interpretive ground remains shaky. Evaluating Chretien's response to the chansons de geste is an exceedingly delicate matter, since he makes only two explicit references to the genre. Seebass-Linggi must therefore deal also with passages in which Chrétien mayhave the epic in mind.Thus, when he emphasizes the extraordinary length ofbattles or Erees prodigious prowess, she concludes that he is playing on the characteristics of the epics, retaining their form but distancinghimselfby dramatizing their invraisembUnceand thus offeringa subtle critique of chivalry. Elsewhere (66-67), discussing a tournament scene in which Erec is lavishlypraised as the equal ofAlexander and others, Seebass-Linggi takes the disproportion (écart) between that praise and his acts as evidence that Chretien's passage is ironic. That conclusion may well be correct, but it leads to another, more curious, one: since tournaments in romance imitate epic battles, Chrétien is here distancing himself from the total devotion to heroism so valued in the chanson de geste. The discussion of Chretien's two references to chansons de geste is on firmer footing but not entirely persuasive. The second one (11. 6675-78), for example, compares Arthur's generosity to that of 'all the kings named in diz and in chansons de geste.' However, since kings in the epic are noted forvalormore than for generosity, she suggests (153) that this reference is faint praise and may actually express reservations aboutArthur's generosity. (Elsewhere, we are told that Erees generosity is questionable ARTHURIANA 8.1 (1998) ARTHURIANA as well, because, having received a gift first, he is simply obeying the dictates of a code that requires giving in return.) The pages devoted to the lyric consider the reciprocal relationships between Chrétien and the troubadours, and especially the particular references made to Erec by the latter. There are seven such references, although only three ofthem, the author admits, provide 'pistes' that lead us to an interpretation oíErec. That interpretation agrees, we are told, with the contention by Fanni Bogdanow that Chrétien inverted the roles of Erec and Enide, making her the long-suffering 'fin amant' and him the dominating dompna of occitan tradition. This is clearly a book that Chrétien scholars should know; it is thorough, thoughtful, and well researched, and Seebass-Linggi is less categorical in her pronouncements than a briefreview may imply. I share her impression that Chrétiens text is often playful and ironic, and it is certain that he was not unaware ofearlier and...

Self-reflectiveness and the category of the will in early troubadour poetry of fin' amors

Self-reflectiveness and the category of the will in early troubadour poetry of fin' amors

Lost Literature of the Troubadours: A Proposed Catalogue

LOST LITERATURE OF THE TROUBADOURS: A PROPOSED CATALOGUE* The time has come to begin inventorying the lost literature of the troubadours. In the last 40 years, attention has been paid to lost works in Latin, medieval English and Portuguese, and to the lost literatures of medieval Ireland, Scotland, and Iceland. In 1995, Alan Deyermond brought a 20-yearproject to fruition by publishingEpicayromance, first volume ofLiteratura perdida de la Edad media castellana. The catalogue oflost troubadour literature proposed here will track lost names, lost poems, lost manuscripts, attributions of anonymous poems, known fragments, new discoveries, and critical literature relevant to all the above. More than ten years ago, Charles Faulhaber, a member of Deyermond's original team of Hispanists, presented a talk entitled "Lost Literature of Medieval Spain?" at the Modern Language Association convention. The question mark in that title referred, not to works known to be lost or to the processes of loss—heretical content, insects, fire, water, earthquake, war—but rather to a number of factors by which works come to be lost to the scholarly community, including simple failure to edit. In sum, texts that are not studied, for whatever reason, are texts that are lost. Faulhaber paid close attention to the very definition of what constitutes a literary work. Many texts are simply defined out of existence as literary works, he found, arguing convincingly that the ensemble of written attestation—including religious and sapiential texts, historical and medical treatises, translations, administrative texts, legal texts, and charters—must be considered if literary texts are not to be "decontextualized." Within the Occitan domain, troubadour poetry, with its prestige and visibility, constitutes a natural starting point for a project that will eventually expand to include lost medieval Occitan writings ofall types. Why undertake the Zen-like task of documenting what is no longer extant—what we know we don't know about the troubadours? To KATHRYN KLINGEBIEL paraphrase Richard Wilson, the cataloguingoflost medieval literatures, even as it yields linguistic and literary benefits to specialists in various disciplines, should eventually contribute to a truer picture ofthe growth and development of medieval Western European civilization. Thecanon ofOld Provençal verse, and the manuscripts/chansonniers which form its core, have benefitted from successive updatings, attributions , reconstitutions, and discoveries. To this day, troubadour poems, including fragments and citations in other works, are described by their Pillet-Carstens inventory number; faithful to the alphabetized and numbered list of troubadours published by Karl Bartsch (1872), the work of Alfred Pillet was continued by Henry Carstens, who brought it from 1909 to 1931. More recently, István Frank (1953-1957) and others have considerably updated this indispensable repertory, e.g., Zufferey 1987 (359-360) names 10 chansonniers that have been rediscovered or recognized since Bartsch's Grundriss. Extant manuscriptsarecodedaccordingtoJeanroy 1916and Brunei 1935. Lostmanuscripts aretrackedby referencetoCamilleChabaneau's 1886 inventory; this work was updated by Anglade (1916) and, in 1971, by Chambers. These dates speak to the clear need for a new centralized listing that will collect and collate all work done in recent years. In France the discovery ofthe troubadours took place only in the late 16th century, when Jean de Nostredame published his Vies des plus célèbres et ancienspoètesprovençaux (1575). Thecanon ofOld Provençal lyric began to take shape as early as the first decade ofthe 14th century in Italy, where poets and commentators developed the lyric tradition of the troubadours. Francesco da Barberino's Documenti was completed ca. 1310; only in 1640 did Francesco Ubaldini edit and enrich the anthology with additional poems and vidas, as well as commentaries, translations into Latin, and a table of contents. A learned Italian of the 16th century, Giovanni Maria Barbieri, collected and published old manuscripts and collections oftroubadour LOST LITERATURE OF THE TROUBADOURS writings. His Libro dell'arte del rimare, written in 1581, was published only in 1790, under the title Dell'origine della poesia rimata; Barbieri owned originals or copies of4 chansonniers, now generally thought to be lost but which, in some cases, contained materials available nowhere else. Not only treatises on poetry but also anthologies have added to our knowledge of troubadour lyric. In the 18th century, Crescimbeni included in his history of...

L'Etreinte des mots: Flamenca, entre poésie et roman (review)

REVIEW Jean-Charles Huchet, L'Etreinte des mots: Flamenca, entre poésie et roman. Caen: Paradigme, 1993. Pp. 232. While the three works ofJean-Charles Huchet (L'Etreinte des mots, Le roman occitan medieval and Littérature médiévale et psychanalyse: Pour une clinique littéraire) are linked by Huchet's methodological apparatus, L 'Etreinte des mots is a successful illustration ofhis methods, producing a sophisticated reading of the Occitan romance Flamenca. The text ofFlamenca is shown to initiate a dialogue with othergenres to define itselfand to attempt to produce a renewal ofOccitan literature through the interrogation ofthe principles oítrobar and amor, and their integration into the novas. The text also attempts to mediate and resolve the tension between several binary concepts, such as troubadour lyric and religious dialogue, lyric poetry and romance, Occitan and French literature. In the first chapter, Huchet summarizesFlamenca and comments on the poor reception of the work at the time of its writing. He also gives a briefdescription of his "clinique littéraire," but refers the reader to his Littérature médiévale et psychanalyse for a more detailed explanation. Through this method, his reading of Flamenca attempts to clarify "Ie rapport de lasexualité et de l'écriture, des genres littéraires, del'écriture et de la réécriture" (25) Huchet beginsthe second chapterwith the problem ofgenre, passing through the medieval references to novas and arriving at his own definition: "le signe du dialogue entretenu par le texte narratif avec la lyrique" (31), which opens a space of renewal for both genres through their dialogue. The primary focus ofthe chapter is the dialogue between poetry and narrative, each serving as the Other through which identity is questioned. The lyric in Flamenca is presented in a fictionalized form and serves as a mise-en-abîme ofa key moment ofthe narrative. As lyric 48 REVIEW is converted into narrative, religious discourse is converted into love discourse, prefiguring events in the text and taking on a profane meaning. Huchet also discusses the textual play on the concept of fin amor "qui fai soen de dos core us," which he finds in the constant reduction of two to one in the text. In the third chapter, Huchet addresses the question oí Flamenca's dialoguewithfin'amorand thetext's attempt to synthesizeand renewthe troubadour discourse within the narrative form. The decline offin amor and troubadour poetry is attributed to the reinforcement ofalterity, with the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary and the replacement of the Dame with a truly unattainable lady. Rather than emphasizing the impossibility of union, Flamenca reintroduces a real woman and thefach intofin' amor. At the same time, the narrative valorizes the word and its meaning(s), stressing the difference between gilosia, in which the husband loses sens (meaning) and misreads signs, and amor, which is "une longue initiation à la polysémie des signes" (108). Language assures the success of the union which no longer denies (hefach, and gilosia becomes the excess which words cannot express. The role of trobar in this dialogue is not the traditional jouissance of unfulfilled desire and sexual impasse, but the construction ofa union in language before its inscription in reality through ihefach. In a series of short analyses of various episodes, Huchet explores in detail the principle of "dos cors us." In examining the salutz sent to Flamenca by Guilhem, Huchet lingers on its illumination and the trick offolding it to make the lovers depicted there seem to embrace. He relates its folding, unfoldingand refoldingto the structure ofthe text itself, which allows the interplay of poetry and romance throughout the narrative. The interplay ofreligion and love discourse is the topic ofthe fourth chapter, divided into discussions on religious versus poetic discourse, liturgical versus romance time and intervals between events. Romance discourse puts religious and other discourses under tension in order to exceed them and to draw its own identity from them while reinforcing the 49 REVIEW specificity of each. The liturgical calendar is discussed as a part of the dialogue with religious discourse, stressing the Otherness of religion in relation iofin' amor. Huchet suggestsyet anotherdialogue in Chapter5, that ofOccitania with France. The novas seems to follow...

Pour un autre soleil... Le Sonnet occitan des origines à nos jours: une anthologie (review)

REVIEW Pierre Bec, ed. Pour un autre soleil... Le Sonnet occitan des origines à nos jours: une anthologie. Préface de Jacques Roubaud. Orléans: Paradigme, 1994. Pp. 351. As Pierre Bec says, the title is a paraphrase of the one Jacques Roubaud gave to the anthology he devoted to the French sonnet. This is a conscious choice by Bee in order to "préparer une certaine injustice. Dire en effet qu'il n'existe pratiquement rien sur le sonnet occitan n'est un secret pour personne" (vii). Jacques Roubaud's preface sets the tonefrom thefirstsentence: "La poésie en langue occitane n'a pas eu de chance avec la forme-sonnet" (iii). The "rival malheureux de frères plus chanceux" (vii) is scarcely mentioned except in Roubaud's own book and in a number ofthe Revue des langues romanes given over to this poetic form in the period 1550 to 1630. The sonnet is not amongthe forms adopted by the troubadours but it owes its origin to the prestige of troubadour poetry at the court of Frederick II ofHohenstaufen, where, between 1230 and 1250, the genre was established by a notary of the Palermo court, Giacomo de Lentini, the great mover of the Scuola siciliana. From there it penetrates into central Italy and is taken up by Guittone d'Arezzo so that, through Guido Guinizelli, the link is made with the dolce stil nuovo. The rest is history. The first extant sonnet is due to Giacomo de Lentini but the Scuola constitutes an important group ofsonnet writers, among whom Dante da Maiano and Lanfranchi da Pistoia experimented by writing sonnets in Occitan, of which there are still three. But the Occitan sonnet not only does not come anywhere near the number of those composed in French but the thousand or so which are extant have only been discovered relatively recently in some cases. Whereas the vogue for this genre in French tends to wane from about 1650, making a timely reappearance, however, in the 19th century, the Occitan sonnet has tended to grow in strength, undiminished. The success of this form is put down to the 52 REVIEW admirationand imitationofthegreatmodelsboth FrenchandPetrarchan, but it has always been the case, according to Pierre Bee, that, while certain writers take it up unreservedly, others confess to not having any predilection for it at all. The poems presented fall into two sections: Sonnets anciens (13th to 18th century) and Sonnets modernes et contemporains (18th century to the present). There are92 in the firstfrom 28 poets (one anonymous) and 183 in the second from 75. In addition, there are three 16th-century sonnets included, in an appendix, from a manuscript ofthe Bibliothèque Inguimbertine in Carpentras, which contains 118 pieces, accompanied by seven sizains, of an anonymous Provençal writer. Each of them is accompanied by a translation into French and an occasional note to clarify a linguistic or biographical element. In the ñrstAnnexe, the poets are identified with a biographical entry and details of their works. This is followed by a succinct glossary and a short bibliography. The choice of poems for inclusion is based on several criteria:the fame of the poet, the importance of the sonnet to the output of the poet, the value of the piece intrinsically and as a representation of its genre, and, finally, the dialect in which the poem is written. The sonnets relating to the early period are of great interest to the medieval scholar and there is certain ground for speculation on the original output ofsonnets and whether many were lost or have not come to the attention of scholars. The three sonnets written in the medieval form of the language are due to Italians with a passion for Occitan. Not much is known about Lanfranchi da Pistoia except that he lived around the end of the 13th century and apparently wrote his sonnet in Occitan in Catalonia. Dante da Maiano was a contemporary ofLanfranchi and his two love sonnets are very much in sympathy with the tenets oifin'amor. But we are then launched into the 16th century with the famous Jehan de Nostredame, whose sonnets are but part ofa more ambitious output. Thereafter, one...

The Jews of Mediaeval Languedoc: The Interplay of Literature

THE JEWS OF MEDIAEVAL LANGUEDOC: THE INTERPLAY OF LITERATURE There are several reasons why there is so little information on Languedoc Jews in Occitan literature, especially among the troubadours : 1.Those troubadours who did mention them, treated them as the "fell juzeu" who betrayed and killed Jesus. 2.As mainly members ofthe upper classes, troubadours had little contact with the general population, let alone with Jews. 3.Troubadours regarded the Old Testament as a prime referencesourceand personalities in the Hebrew Tanach as heroes; it did not occur to them to connect contemporary Jews with those in the Bible. 4.The very nature of troubadour poetry was such as not to include Jews. Their dona was a Christian woman, if not the Virgin herself. Only occasionally did they recognize the beauty of a Jewish or Arab woman. 5.Jews were largely cut off either by choosing or being forced tolive in special quarters and by leadingaprivate theocratic life. 6.AsJewish scholarsbecameconcerned chiefly with the Talmud, Christian incomprehension of its nature led to its being attacked and regarded as a book of incantations , curses, even of magic. CYRIL HERSHON "LO FELL JUDEUS" TheChurch constantly promoted the ideathatJewsweretheenemies of Christ, a notion that came to a head in the early thirteenth century. Though they were nominally protected by the ConstitueproJudeis—the bull Sicut Judeis was renewed by each Pope on application (Grayzel/ Stow, 55-56)— Innocent III felt that the guilt for the Crucifixion consigned Jews to perpetual servitude— wanderers ('Le Juif Errant') and fugitives like Cain. The Church was the Beloved Bride, whereas the Synagogue (Jewry) was the Despised and Wretched Wife (Hagar), unable to share the rewards destined for the children of God's Beloved Church (Grayzel, letters 13,14,18). Mindful of the teachings of St. Augustine, Popes considered Jewish continuity a theological necessity (5, 14); Christian charity required they be defended, for crimes against Jews offended God (88). Yet only in one papal letter was kindliness expressed (70). Little wonder, then, that Christian writers, including troubadours, dismissed Jews as the 'Enemic' (otherwise Satan). The eleventh-century Chanson de Sainte Foi d'Agen found many opportunities to attack Jews: "Judeu l'aucidrun enveios" (Thomas, 1974: 1.308); while it says of the Roman Maximian and Diocletian: peior foron q'altre Judeu E feirun peiz qe Filisteu (1.484/ 485), and St. Maurice was said to have been betrayed in the same way asJesus: Traciunn fez Io fell Judeus, Lui eiss aucis, czo es motz reus (1.525/ 526). However, the author ofthe Chanson was among the few to acknowledge thatJewswere notallowedtopronounce God's name,saying^doraai (The Lord) for its four-letter abbreviation: 90 THE JEWS OF MEDIEVAL LANGUEDOC Lo seus noms es Adonai: Aitai lo diss a Moysi. (1.314/ 5) The fourteenth-century version (not a direct translation) Evangile de Nicodème, written in the diocese of Agde after the Jewish expulsion of 1306, maintained the theme of the traitorous Jew, using phrases not in the original Latin: Cant Ii juzieu fello trachor Viro de Cristz nostre senhor las meravilhas que fazia... (Bartsch, 374, 1.15-17) Collective guilt is apportioned, even for Judas' betrayal: Peire de Corbac, writing about 1250, when speaking of Jerusalem, writes: Aqui fon de juzieus grans enviliamens, trenta per un denier: so fon lo venjamens del mercat c'ap els fetz Judas Io descrezens, que vendet Jhesu Crist trenta deniers d'argens. (PC 338, 1; Bartsch, 210, 10-13) Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, who died while on the Fourth Crusade about 1207, felt that maltreating Jews at least led to salvation: Deus se laisset vendre per nos salvar, en receup mort en soffri passio, el auniron per nos juzeu fello, en fon batutz e liatz al pilar... (PC 392, 31 11. 34-37) 91 CYRIL HERSHON TROURADOUR EXCLUSIVITY Totas genz cristianas, iusieuas et sarazinas, emperador, princeps, rei, duc, conte, vesconte, contor, valvasor, clergue, borgues, vilans, paucs et granz, meton totz iorns lor entendiment en trobar et en chantar... (Raimon Vidal, Rozos de trobar, Marshall, B79 (V) a, 1.20-23) But not everyone wrote in Occitan. Jewish poets used Hebrew, sometimes Arabic; the Moslem strictly Arabic. Nora Caron's assertion that there were Jews...

Guiraut Riquier and The Study of Proverbs

GUIRAUT RIQUTER AND THE STUDY OF PROVERBS It is a commonplace to say that GuirautRiquier grew increasingly aware with time that he was to be the last of the troubadours. Still, "from his earliest poem of 1254 to his latest, of 1292, one can trace his efforts to maintain . . . the traditions of troubadour lyric poetry" (Press 306). During the early part ofhis career, he sought patronage in Narbonne, probably near his place of birth. In 1270, he traveled to Spain, settling at the court ofAlfonso X, el Sabio. Alfonso had, however, "material, dynastic and political" problems (Press 307) and before the end of the decade Guiraut returned to France, to the court ofHenry II ofRodez. Henry's was "one ofthe last to maintain, albeit on a restricted scale," an active literary life, and "Guiraut's hopes (were] for a time revived" (Press 307). But in 1286, he lamented once more the absence of patronage and protection. His last poem is dated 1292; it is thought that he returned to Narbonne to end his days. The poet is the second most prolific of the Occitan troubadours, having left us a rich collection ofworks, works even more remarkable for the nature of their organization. For example. Guiraut composed six pastorelas, which are linked by their characters and by time (see Bossy, "Twin Flocks"). The pastorelas tell a story that takes place over time; first Guiraut meets a shepherdess, who rebuffs his advances but is happy to converse with him. Over the years, both poet and damsel grow old—she marries, has a daughter, travels to Compostella, returns to her home to acquire an inn which she manages with her now grown daughter. The poet's personal changes are also recorded in the six collected conversations—his lady, Bel Deport is gone and he ages too. Guiraut's cansos and vers are also collected in highly organized fashion, as Michel-André Bossy has recently demonstrated (see "Cyclical Composition"). The poet also composed sirventes, retroenchas, tensos, albas, and non-lyric verse epistles. Alan Press described Guiraut's verse in these terms: "The moral, religious, and literary advice and exposition to which his long verse epistles are devoted are as unrelievedly earnest and solemn as, in his lyrics, the more conventional laments of unrequited love, the protestations of unconditioned loyalty, the prayers to God and the GUIRAUT RIQUIER AND PROVERBS Virgin Mary, the complaints about the decline of courtliness and about his own failure to secure recognition" (Press 307). Press sees in Guiraut "a lack of genuine creativity" (308) and that "even his best work is distinguished by little more than adequate resolutions of unambitious technical problems and satisfactorily coherent formulations oflong-established themes" (308). Press goes on to suggest that Guiraut's success in religious lyrics explains why his love poetry was unrewarded, "religious lyrics . . . tend, by their very nature, at first to rival and ultimately replace the secular ideals on which the troubadour lyric had been founded" (308). "Both religious lyrics and long verse treatises, finally, while leaving far behind the art and inspiration of Guiraut's predecessors, already announce two distinctive features of later medieval poetry, be it that cultivated by the good burgesses ofToulouse in the Consistori del Gay Saber, or that of the professional writers labouring in the courts of northern France" (308). Press wrote his somewhat harsh judgment of Guiraut in the early 1970s; since then, the poet has merited new editions of his works, even ifthese have faults of their own, most notably to ignore in large part the unity the poet himself sought to give to his corpus (see Linskill, Longobardi, Molk and Paden). In the light of these new editions, more recent students of Guiraut have been more even in theirjudgments of the poet. Martin de Riquer, for example, praises Guiraut's musical talents and his abilities as a lyricist, "... sus rimas son perfectas y variadas ... y sin duda alguna fue un buen músico" (1611), though he continues, "Los vers morales de Guiraut Riquier son tediosamente sentenciosos y sin chispas de originalidad" (1611). My own angle of approach to Guiraut is through his use of proverbs and of proverbial materials. To consider his use of...

The Farced Epistle as Dramatic Form in the Twelfth Century Renaissance

The Farced Epistle as Dramatic Form in the Twelfth Century Renaissance E. Catherine Dunn The seminal book in twentieth-century medieval studies was Charles Homer Haskins' Renaissance ofthe Twelfth Century.1 It was a major challenge to the cataclysmic theory of history that had underlain the terms 'medieval' and 'Renaissance' in the renowned study of the Italian quattrocento that Jakob Burckhardt had written in 1 860, and that had dominated the field of European historical scholarship for nearly seventy years.2 In place of the Burckhardtian view of the Renaissance as a sudden and violent break with the Middle Ages, Haskins offered a French renaissance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that had a Classical Latin basis in the culture of ancient Rome and that in turn provided a groundwork for the larger and more dynamic renewal of European intellectual and artistic life in fifteenth century Italy. Haskins' work served as a catalyst for the American movement that developed in the 1940's as the History of Ideas—a movement that was immensely influential here for decades.3 In 1977, fifty years after the appearance of Haskins' book, Harvard University sponsored a symposium celebrating the attainment ofthis anniversary and reconsidering his achievement in the light of scholarly studies completed during the five decades after 1927. The essays written for the symposium and published in 1982 affirmed the central thesis of Haskins' volume, resting the high medieval culture on the Classicism of ancient Rome. However , these essays tended, almost in spite oftheir announced position , to reassess this classicism as a non-Roman phenomenon. It seems that the papers again and again were expressing an uneasiness with the boundaries of Haskins' perspective, limited to an academic renaissance of ancient law, philosophy, and science and therefore inadequate to the creative flowering of imaginative literature and artistic endeavor. The achievements slighted by him included the Provençal troubadour lyrics, the northern French 363 364Comparative Drama romances, and the Latin liturgical and paraliturgical drama.4 Parallel with the implicit challenges to Haskins in the Harvard symposium there have been direct attacks on his position by Erwin Panofsky, Maria Menocal, and others. Panofsky, who wrote various articles on the topic, produced a monograph published in 1960, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art,5 in which he viewed twelfth-century culture as a gathering of bits and pieces from classical antiquity (a salvaging of flotsam and jetsam) without a grasp of Roman or Graeco-Roman culture in a holistic concept . Panofsky's view in itself seems to suffer from the limitation of its perspective to graphic art and thus to fail to account for the creative achievements in Latin and vernacular literature. In the decade following the Harvard symposium another approach to the problem was published by Menocal, who asserted that Semitic culture was the center of twelfth-century learning—i.e., Arabic and Jewish intellectual achievements in translating and adapting ancient Greek rather than Roman texts of literature and the natural sciences.6 The scope of this whole academic debate is overwhelming in its breadth and its complexity. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a theory about one genre of literary and musical composition that may throw light on the nature of this renaissance. I am drawing upon some of the previous theories but complementing and expanding them. My interest is in a little-known creative activity in the twelfth-century monastic and cathedral liturgies that may reveal features of classical tradition in a way different from those observed by Haskins. This activity was the writing of "farced epistles"—i.e., troped lections—as the last phase of the great medieval troping movement. This movement had originated in the Carolingian era but came to a new prominence in the twelfth century as farced epistle composition, adorning the readings of Matins and Mass in a particularly dramatic way.7 The troping of lections may be paradigmatic of other creative activities in the renaissance as well. It may be advisable to consider a term for the twelfth century other than "renaissance," even though Haskins had favored it in his title and text. The editors of the Harvard symposium, Robert Benson and Giles Constable, preferred renovatio, which they attribute...

Ermengarda of Narbonne and Beatrice of Este: A Study in Contrasts

ERMENGARDA OF NARBONNE AND BEATRICE OF ESTE: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS Too often medieval and modern concepts are confused in our minds because the terms used appear to be the same. Our modern sense of patron / patroness connotes someone who protects, supports or sponsors someone or something (Random House Dictionary s.v.), a meaning narrower than that known to the Middle Ages. For medieval society, this first meaning applied, but with the connotation as well ofsomeone who serves as a passive idealization, a quality peculiar to the troubadour tradition and exclusively reserved for the patroness.1 As demonstration of the very different meanings of patroness in medieval Occitan society, let us consider Ermengarda ofNarbonne and Beatrice ofEste, although we have no proofthat the term pairona / patrona was ever applied to either of them. The first was both an active and a passive supporter of troubadour lyric; the second inspired, thanks to her name, rank and personal qualities, cultural activities worthy of protection. Both women served as muses, albeit in different ways. Ermengarda, viscountess, of Narbonne (ca. 1 125-1 194. see Hall, 19-16. and Bergert, 6-10) succeeded her father Aymeri II, who was killed in the battle of Fraga (Catalonia) in 1 134; her older brother Aymeri had predeceased him. In 1 142 she married a Spanish lord, Alfonso, of whom nothing is known except that he died three years later; the same year she remarried, this time to the Languedocian countBernard ofAnduze. She had no offspringfrom eithermarriage. Frequently at odds with her suzerain, the Count of Toulouse, she allied herselffirst with Pope Alexander II, then with King Louis VlI of France, finally with the Count of Barcelona and king of Aragon, whose suzerainty she recognized. In 1 192 she abdicated in favor of Peter of Lara, the younger son of her half sister, and retired to Perpignan, where she died twoyears later. She isburied at the abbey of Fontfroide (founded in 1093 by her grandfather Aymeri I), which she had favored all her life. Ermengarda was renowned for the wisdom and skill with which for half a century she governed her lands. In a letter dated 1 163 of HANS-ERICH KELLER greatest interest for the history ofwomen'srights in the Middle Ages, Louis VIl even accorded her—a woman—the right to administer justice (see Devic and Vaissète, 3:843-44); in a letter of 1173, however, she allied herselfwith other southern lords in wishing that King Louis had Charlemagne's magnanimity in respecting the liberties of the lords of Southern France (see Devic and Vaissète 6:55). In addition to her celebrated intelligence and energy, Ermengarda's pro-French stance is certainly the reason she had the honor ofbeing the only lady not belonging to the family of Countess Marie ofChampagne to pronouncejudgments (VIII, IX. X XI and XV) on love in Andreas Capellanus' DeAmore. In 1 157 Ermengarda confirmed the donations ofher forebears to the abbey of Fontfroide (Dimier 230); in 1178 she accepted a donation by Pons of Olargues in the name of Fontfroide (Devic and Vaissète 6:76). But she seems not to have been actively involved in the construction program of this seminal abbey since, according to Dimier's plan ofthe church, the original parts ofthe present building date only from the end ofthe twelfth century (232), nor are particular donations by her attested to this abbey or to other institutions.2 However. Ermengarda seems to have had a very strong interest in troubadour poetry. According to Devic and Vaissète (6: 1 52), she supported particularly Sail d'Escola. the son of a merchant in Bergerac, whose poemswere highly appreciated atthe time. His uida (Boutière and Schutz 64) says that he left the court ofNarbonne only after Ermengarda's death. However, his only extant poem, a satire (published by Chabaneau, 218-19). makes no reference to either Ermengarda or Narbonne. Peire Rogier addresses her under the senhal Tort-n'avetz" in four—perhaps even five—of his nine extant poems. They all reveal a poet who worships a lady at Narbonne. even if he is geographically separated from her, but none mentions more except that his...