Notes on the vectors of analysis of the “metrical” repertoire of Troubadour poetry

The subject of this research is the principles of presentation to the reader of the full corpus of poetic texts of troubadours in a specialized publication in form of metrical-strophic reference book. Analysis is conducted on the approaches towards compiling such type of compendium demonstrated By I. Frank and V. B. Tomashevsky in 1950s. The author determines the strong and weak aspects of their prosodic publications. Taking into account the specificity of Old Provencal poetry, the author defines the additional ways of its presentation in the reference book comparable to I. Frank’s “Metrical Repertoire of Troubadour Poetry” that retains scientific fundamentality of the latter and addresses its flaws. The novelty of this research manifests in creation of a range of methods for compiling compendiums of strophic forms of Provencal poetry and conducted classification according to the principle of the volume of strophes, which in this article is presented in appendix page. The author concludes on the need of utilization of various methods of composing reference material, which would maintain apparent connection of strophic forms of different sizes substantiated by plausible genre proximity; possible correlation between the late medieval forms of literature in Romanic languages and forms of troubadour poetry, for establishing genetic affinity with the latter and the subsequent creation of historical poetics of the European strophe.

Stolen Song

This book documents the act of cultural appropriation that created a founding moment for French literary history: the rescripting and domestication of troubadour song, a prestige corpus in the European sphere, as French. This book also documents the simultaneous creation of an alternative point of origin for French literary history—a body of faux-archaic Occitanizing songs. Most scholars would find the claim that troubadour poetry is the origin of French literature uncomplicated and uncontroversial. However, this book shows that the “Frenchness” of this tradition was invented, constructed, and confected by francophone medieval poets and compilers keen to devise their own literary history. The book makes a major contribution to medieval studies both by exposing this act of cultural appropriation as the origin of the French canon and by elaborating a new approach to questions of political and cultural identity. It shows that these questions, usually addressed on the level of narrative and theme, can also be fruitfully approached through formal, linguistic, and manuscript-oriented tools.

In the Honour of Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.: On the Sources of the Narrative Self

Modern philosophy is based on the presupposition of the certainty of the ego’s experience. Both Descartes and Kant assume this certitude as the basis for certain knowledge. Here the argument is developed that this ego has its sources not only in Scholastic philosophy, but also in the narrative of the emotional self as developed by both the troubadours and the medieval mystics. This narrative self has three moments: salvation, self-irony, and nostalgia. While salvation is rooted in the Christian tradition, self-irony and nostalgia are first addressed in twelfth-century troubadour poetry in Occitania. Their integration into a narrative self was developed in late medieval mysticism, and reached its fullest articulation in St. Teresa of Avila, whom Descartes read.

Hate Speech and French Mediaeval Literature

Hate speech is spoken or written word which expresses a hostile attitude of a dominating majority towards any kind of minority. The author analyses a few examples of hate speech in literary history and concludes that such a phenomenon is typical of The Song of Roland, whether uttered in a direct way or spoken between the lines. One will expect hate speech in epic and heroic poetry, less in the Troubadour poetry. Yet we come across this awkward characteristic even in their love poetry. To be quite clear, in the poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn. The last part of the article is about the courtly romance. The author concludes that hate speech can only be controlled by love, not any, but the love that makes one a better person, and which the Troubadours called fin’amors.

L’impronta di Matteo di Vendôme nella diffusione degli schemi di correlazione e pluralità (sec. XI-XVI)

Matteo of Vendôme’s Ars versificatoria is the volume that, more than any other, lets us identify in the troubadours’ vocabulary some recurring features regarding morpho-stylistics and rhyming. Moreover, the Ars versificatoria is the well-known archetype of two stylistic features that are crucial in authors of trobar clus (especially Raimbaut d’Aurenga and Arnaut Daniel), who hand them down to Petrarch and the European Petrarchism: the first one concerns the asyndeton (Versefüllendes Asyndeton) that is usually employed in the ordo artificialis to mark the beginning of a poem; the latter regards the arrangement according to the rhetorical pattern called versus rapportati. As to the Poetria nova, it lets us clarify the meaning of some keywords of the troubadour poetry, especially those related to a technique that is usually (and anachronistically) interpreted in a symbolic way, but which actually derives from rules and notions coming from the school of Chartres and elaborated by Geoffrey of Vinsauf. This paper can be viewed as a chance to gather and re-examine many ideas collected in some of the Author’s publications.

A főnix újjászületése Petrarca Daloskönyvében

In the history of civilization and ancient literature, from Hesiod, Herodotus, Pliny, Tacito, Ovid to early Christian authors the symbolism of the bird periodically reborn from its ashes continued to survive in the sheets of encyclopedias and bestiaries. The image of the phoenix was transmitted by medieval troubadour poetry in form of rhetorical figures. Francesco Petrarca was not only the renewer of European poetry: he opened a completely singular way even in the interpretation of the unica avis. After having briefly outlined the poetic and spiritual symbolism of the phoenix, the paper focuses on a new poetic role of the bird present in six poems of Canzoniere, accentuating its reflective and pondered contiguousness.

The Influence of the Andalusi Muashah on the Troubadour Poetry

This study investigated the relationship between the Andalusi Muashah and the Troubadour that appeared in the eleventh century in southern France with the coexistence of the Arab Islamic presence in Andalusia where the Andalusi Muashah appeared in the fourth century AH. The study also examined the different perspectives about the origins of the Troubadour, and how the Andalusi Muashah reached this type of poetry. Besides, the present study further shed light on the structure of the Andalusi Muashah and the Troubadourian poems, thus presenting the overlapping between these two literary genres in terms of form, structure and divisions.