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Who are the troubadours?
One would expect him to be courtiers (“courtly love”) but, at the same time, logically, they must know a site of relatively lower social status (relative to the lady they are addressing. their poems). In fact, the authors of courtly songs occupy almost all social categories. There are ≠ origins of this name:
- The seigniorial origin = Guillaume IX is regarded as “the first troubadour” (he is duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers); his granddaughter, Aliénor d’Aquitaine married Louis VII, the King of France, and gave birth to two daughters, Marie, countess of Champagne, and Alix, countess of Blois (it is considered that through this, the poetry of the south s ‘is exported to the north of France). But this name also comes from Henri II Plantagenêt, who becomes king of England, and their son is Richard Coeur de Lion, who is himself the author of courteous songs (in “French”).
- Modest origin = Jaufré Rudel who is “prince of Blaye, lord of Pons and Bergerac” (land aristocracy, around Bordeaux); Bernart de Ventadorn (Bernard de Ventadour) who is the son of a servant in the service of the lord of the castle of Ventadour, Eblès II, who teaches him poetry …, but who will then be chased by his son (Eblès III) for being too diligent with his wife. Thereafter, Ventadour becomes attached to the court of Poitiers of Aliénor (after the annulment of his marriage with Louis VII and before his departure for England). But there are also other troubadours who do not originally belong to the circle of a feudal court, such as Giraut de Borneil, but who are then integrated into seigneurial courts (notably poets). Apart from these authors, there are small nobles, outsiders, merchants, jugglers (the juggler is the one who sings, who ensures the performance, as opposed to the poet who composes “the moz e’l so”)
The origins of troubadour poetry
We must distinguish the origins of a sociological order from properly literary filiations: - Sociological logic = The seigneurial courts of the Midi which are characterized by a relative autonomy from the distant royal power + a more favorable status for women than in the North + a lesser influence of the Church + the need for the nobility to constitute themselves a specific ethic which strengthens, even justifies its existence, especially the petty nobility which undergoes a relative impoverishment compared to the great lords.
- Anthropological logic = Popular festivals linked to the revival of spring, which manifest love-desire in nature, to which popular rituals respond where women, young girls and married women, allow themselves to be courted by men with or without passage at
- Literary logic = Several hypotheses have been put forward, but none has the full support of medievalists. We can quickly distinguish 3 literary filiations depending on the language in which it is expressed. The first is a popular oral tradition in the Romance language: This hypothesis seems obvious, due to linguistic continuity (same language, Occitan) and due to anthropological logic. This popular poetry leaves no written trace, however; it is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate parentage. Moreover, if we accept this hypothesis, the popular legacy was then radically transformed by a learned contribution from the poets. The second hypothesis concerns the Latin filiations, which is divided into several independent filiations: Ovid, with the Art of loving and the Remedies of love and perhaps even more the Heroes which say the separation between the lovers. We can indeed note reminiscences in the poems, especially as Ovid’s texts were used at the time as a support in school learning, but the thought of fin’amor, radical, is very far from the free tone and “worldly” by Ovid; the Church, in which we again distinguish several hypotheses: The poetry practiced in Poitiers in particular around the bishop Venance Fortunat (5th century), who praises the wives of the great lords + in Limoges more precisely in the abbey of Saint-Martial where the tropus is practiced in particular, that is to say a poetic form in the name would be found in the word troubadour + in Angers in Chartres in the 9th century + generally in poetry goliards, that is to say itinerant clerics who wrote songs in Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries, but in an essentially satirical or even scathing register. The last hypothesis concerns an Arab or Hispano-Arab filiation: The hypothesis of an influence of the Arab poetic tradition appears today to researchers more and more convincing,
due to a thematic convergence (the cult of women, etc.) and a certain formal convergence (Michel Zink speaks of a “similarity of strophic forms”), especially since the Arabs have occupied Spain since the 8th century → All these hypotheses find their limits which are due on the one hand to the language (Latin and Arabic are not Occitan), on the other hand to the conjunction of words and music (Latin poetry does not is not sung, except the poetry of the goliards) and finally to the geographical discontinuity (Arab Spain or Angers and Chartres do not correspond to the region in which the courtly cansò developed (namely Limousin, Poitou and Gascony )
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