Tag Archives: medieval

The Trobairitz Tradition Continued

(Castelloza, BnF MS 843 f. 125)

I have been hesitant to continue my writing on the trobairitz not due to lack of interest, but in sheer awe of the corpus of works these women left behind which I have steadfastly been attempting to make my way through. While it is by no means an extensive collection, it is rich in a tradition that has remained ever so under examined. This is yet another post that humbly attempts to broach yet one more meager inch into understanding the trobairiz and what they meant to the even larger tradition of female writing.

What I find the most startling in their words is their candid tone that allows them to well overstep their social bounds and, through poetry, transgress. They do not adhere to their roles of subservience in their homes or in society, and their voices, as heard in their songs, are, for lack of a better term, saucy. The trobairitz etymologically are borne from the troubadours,those who find, and the trobairitz arguably found their voices and synchronously created their own unique poetic language and tradition that was not merely carved out from the corpus of their male counterparts.

Yet, even as they found their voices most scholarship over the last twenty years has sought to find their names – to understand their place in society, and make sense of their words and songs in terms of their various lifestyles. In a nutshell, the vast amount of critical attention the trobairitz have elicited in recent years constantly seeks to historicize them, privileging a biographical component to their writing. However, this is no easy feat, and with each new discovery there comes debate where academics argue against the newest attributions of identity, often in light of contradictory evidence or even lack of it.

As is, the number of names attributed to the trobairitz are few, and there is little evidence to even play around with, much less debate. However, I feel the debate started in earnest when the trobairitz’s very existence was challenged, practically erased from the history of the larger Troubadour tradition. Beginning with Pierre Bec’s assertion that there were no instances of female authorship (feminite genetique, as he distinguished authorship from merely the female voice, feminite textuelle) in twelfth and thirteenth century northern France, the hunt for female composers was set off. Nevertheless, even as scholars searched out possible medieval female writing there also appeared to be an unmistakeable acquiescence to Bec’s findings that resulted with these female figures left existing in a world of limbo – Shrodinger’s trobairitz.

(note: yes, the trobairitz are originally female poets from the South of France, but I believe current research brings to question the limitations of their spheres, and in subsequent pieces to be posted throughout the next months I will explore their influence across longitudinal borders, which should place into context my intermixing between the hemispheres of France).

From Bec’s assertion sprung numerous others outlining the impossibility of female writing. Either women were simply inept at poetry, or the question would arise as to why they would want to disturb the status quo of the predominantly male Troubadour tradition that placed them upon pedestals, forgetting the attributes ascribed to women placed them upon false pedestals reserved for poor creatures who needed vainglory above all else.

Yet, as more and more probing took place, it became apparent that these early assertions were inaccurate, and female troubadours, to be later referred to as the trobairitz, had thrived in northern France, and southern France, …and Spain, …and Italy. Unfortunately this created the other side of the spectrum where not only did these poetesses exist, but they suddenly existed everywhere, and in large quantities. One of the determining factors for considering female authorship at one point was the appearance of the feminine pronoun in the first person within the work – a cringe-worthy method that quickly created an overabundance of female attributed poems (as I previously discussed such poems created by men, namely Clement Marot).

However, while Bec asserted women in northern France were most certainly not composing poetry, he oddly did not argue a similar case for women of other nationalities. This leads to an entirely new paradox where women were seemingly composing works across Europe in the Middle Ages, except in norther France, where even Bec agreed they were most certainly performing the poems men wrote. What I immediately noticed in this rather convoluted argument was his very precise delineation between authorship and performance where the two acts were irrevocably polarized. If you have been following my female scribe and my trobairitz posts, then you will recall that this distinction if ultimately faulty. Through the process of recreation via any medium, be it written, sung, or simply spoken, there is an inherent mingling into the world of editing. I would never take this argument so far as to posit that these songs should be attributed to women simply because they changed a few words, or even improved the meter, or flow. Withal, when works are appropriated and reconfigured to convey novel ideas, then the work no longer belongs wholly to the original author.

Last time Beatritz de Dia served as the example of appropriation in her “A chantar m’er” as she strategically and wittingly railed at her lover, far outside the perameters of the Courtly Love she was supposedly mimicking, and sounded much more like our modern day H.D. Still, as I constantly use the term “appropriate,” an appropriate French idiom flies to mind, “appeler un chat un chat” (roughly, “let’s call a spade a spade”), and let us refer to “appropriate” as what it really is, “to steal.” Recalling Helene Cixous double entendre verb, voler, it is precisely through such theft of patriarchally dominant methods of communication that women can fly, or even better, soar. Thus the trobairitz took the concepts of Troubadour poetry and flew with them.

Currently I am working on translating two more trobairitz poems, not because I don’t like the translations already circulating, but because I feel most comfortable with a work once I have devised various ways of interpretation that capture the different nuances each word choice has to offer. William Padden’s work on Castelloza is presently guiding my translations as her and Azalais de Porcairagues (who is slightly more elusive) are the two poetesses I want to focus on momentarily.

(Azalais de Porcairagues, BnF MS 854 f. 140)

(Azalais de Porcairagues, BnF MS fr. 12473, f. 125)

(same as above)

Sources:

Bec, Pierre. Ecrits sur les troubadours et la lyrique medievale.

Bec, Pierre. Trobairitz’ et chansons de femme.

Bogin, Meg. The Woman Troubadours.

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.”

Gaunt, Simon. “Poetry of Exclusion: a Feminist Reading of Some Troubadour Lyrics.”

Paden, William. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours.

The Knight Templar, His Origin, and Role

After researching the Crusades for the past couple of weeks for an upcoming conference, and after attempting to better acquaint myself with the material by running the gamut of historical narratives on the relevant events of the twelfth century, I realize very few of my findings thus far will make their way into my presentation since information on various battles and key figures is abundantly available and doesn’t require my detailed reiteration.

So, moving forward, since an axiomatic understanding of the success associated with the Crusades is at best biased, I am instead going to use Assassin’s Creed to guide my research (recall that the the topic is Medievlism in Pop Culture, specifically the video game Assassin’s Creed).

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, here is the basic information for it, from which I will focus on the original plot that takes place in the twelfth century during the Third Crusade. I am not entirely sure if this will be the best approach, but for my purposes here I am going to once again rely on some fact finding where I situate the main characters from Assassin’s Creed, the Assassins and the Knights Templar, into their appropriate milieux.

The Knight Templar figure should be, especially to a modern western audience, immediately recognizable. However, the chivalrous, noble knightly image we have all at some point ingrained in our head was not the only figure participating in the Crusades, and the period is marked by an onslaught of Franks from every social class, and even at times women, making their way towards the Holy Land to fight off non Christians. This was a time ripe with the ethos of fear which fueled secular ambitions for the Crusades that in turn provided the justification for violence and hostility, transforming them into a series of far less than pious endeavors. The etymology of the word “crusade” is in itself telling of how ideologies were manipulated to satisfy diverse goals. As early as when the Crusades started, the word did not exist. If language shapes our reality, or at the very least our perception of it, then the first knights deployed to the Holy Land were not embarking on anything more than a trek. The negative connotation associated with the Crusades was later fashioned once the atrocities became widespread. Even today, a crusade does not bear the implication of more than a mission or campaign, however, when stated in context of a proper noun, the Crusades take on the meaning they had developed over time, not of religious cleansing, but religious persecution.

Further, Augustinian philosophy was used to condone violent actions under very specific circumstances, especially when performing the work of God, and thus bridging the gap between the pacifism preached in Christian doctrine and the everyday terror in the Holy Land that had now become a natural occurrence.

(Knights Templar burning at the stake, anonymous Chronicle, From the Creation of the World until 1384. Bibliotheque Municipale, Besancon, France)

By the thirteenth century the Knights Templar were no longer viewed as the heroes of Christendom, and as support for their various campaigns dwindled, they became persecuted not just in the Outremer and abroad, but also at home where they were systematically eradicated across Europe through arrest, dissolution of property, and eventual burning and hanging.

However, it was the methodology of their extinction that has cemented their existence and popularity into the modern day. Heresy charges against them were for the most part hearsay, and confessions were coerced through means of torture when the very institution which created them set out to annihilate the order as the church realized the Templars had grown to proportions beyond the control of a single body. The Templars, too, had realized their power once they began moving and acting as a single massive and autonomous entity. This, of course is an exceedingly simplified recap of events, and there was not any single factor that contributed to the Templars’ downfall. During the latter parts of their career they were at odds with numerous factions, amassing enemies at an alarming rate. Nevertheless, despite all of this, they were a considerable force, and to be so swiftly and cleanly wiped from society does not resonate very well with most sensibilities, hence the reemerging theories about their continued prosperity and secret existence, so well executed as to claim hold on our modern imagination.

Yet, this is what I believe it is – a fancy, a whimsy of fiction where history was dredged up and re-conceptualized for entertainment purposes. I have admittedly not conducted an extensive survey of scholarship dealing with this particular facet of Templar history, but among the works I have read I remain unconvinced of the historical accuracy behind the multiple popular culture reference to hidden societies descendant from the Templars themselves. But I am not here to necessarily articulate a tangible link, and the rehashing of history serves sufficiently for my purposes. I am not arguing that there is a line of descent from the Templars, or even that there could potentially be, but simply that interest in the subject, for various reasons has remained and can function as a conduit to the past in an almost allegoric sense where by reviewing history we can learn from it, which is exactly what I argue in my Assassins Creed paper.

As the collapse of the infrastructure that supported the Templars was occurring, the logistics behind this downfall remained obscured, and its various causes are still a mystery today. However, what I find most interesting is the use of the perceived Islamic threat that was used as a catalyst for the Crusades, and how that single connecting strand still stands. It would make little sense for Templars to continue existing in a vacuum. They were called into being for a reason and can only continue so under the same pretext, thus, for the Templars to exist, so must the enemy, whether real or perceived. This brings me to the Assassins, not just within the game I working with, but within historical accounts – rendering an even more complex image, to which I will return in the next section of this.

So far, even though my argument is not yet fully formed, I am having a lot of fun position the various pieces of information as I conduct more research, and I definitely look forward to untangling some of my findings on the Assassins.

If I don’t manage to post again in the next week, Happy Holidays everyone!

Sources:

Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple.

Barber, Malcolm. The Trial of the Templars.

Cowdrey, H. “Christianity and the morality of warfare.”

Haag, Michael. Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon’s Temple To The Freemasons.

Martin, Sean. The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order.

Russell, Frederick. The Just War in the Middle Ages.

The Trobairitz Tradition

On one of my previous posts a Twitter discussions started where we began wondering whether Troubadour poetry about women was really written by women, or if the females simply performed words created by men. I am hesitant to believe one or the other and felt there was probably a mixture of authentic female voices, and those that only mimicked feminine sentiments. Despite numerous sources that referred to these poets as female, I remained skeptical as no actual proof was offered, and it appeared that the subject matter of the poems (women’s lives) informed the way the anonymous poets were regarded. Simply because feminine plight was at the center of these works did not absolutely point to a female writer, which should have been immediately apparent from one of the poems I translated by Clement Maron, “Of the Young Lady With An Old Husband,” that was clearly written by a man.

Per usual this lead to further research. Where did women stand within the Troubadour tradition? As it turns out, right in the center, playing a rather prominent role in not just reciting, but creating many of the works that have come down to us today.

(“Flower Dance” – Ermengol, Breviaire d’Amour, 12th century, Bibliotheque Royale, Escurial)

(British Library, MS Royal 16 G. V folio 3v)

During the High Middle Ages Troubadours were composers and performers of lyric poetry. Initially this form of art was prevalent in the Occitan, but then by the thirteenth century migrated to Italy and Spain. Trobairitz are female Troubadours, however this term came about late in Troubadour history, the thirteen century, and was not widely circulated. Thus most Troubadours, regardless of their sex, used the same identifier, rendering their works in many cases indistinguishable. If only writings by Trobairitz were considered female, their contribution to poetry would appear painfully barren.

Yet, this term, I think, serves another interesting purpose. I see it as a defined distinction between men and women within the Troubadour tradition, as well as delineating the same difference for us today. It is easier to generalize the term and refer to all female Troubadours as Trobairitz, which for my purposes here I will use. However, most importantly, it shows there was a need even in the Middle Ages to distinguish between the two genders when regarding their works.

(Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS Francais 599 folio 19)

Authorship hardly had the same meaning as it does for us today, but it appears voice was the discerning factor. Troubadour and Trobairitz poems were highly stylized which makes it difficult to argue the precise point where the authentic female voice is found, but when looking at the subjects that were typically touched on by both sexes, voice becomes very important. Courtly love, and specifically fin’ amor, a favorite of the Troubadours, parades under the guise of exulted love and reverence for the female while simultaneously encapsulating her within male ideals. This poetry was not only stylized in form, but also in content, and the female form, albeit adored, was also severally restricted.

While I am sure some women did simply mimic the men who in turn mimicked them, in some sort of thrice removed poetic rendition of love, I also believe that within the confines of this tradition women were not simply slaves to the expectations of the system, but participants in their own right, altering the pieces to better reflect their own opinions.

It has been stated that the female Troubadours, or the Trobairitz, were more realistic in their assessment of love, but I think this stemmed from a better understanding of self. If Troubadour poetry set out to idolize the female, spiritually and physically, it would follow that a woman would be most in touch with herself and her own body, less enamored by some abstract ideal that she knows to be absolutely impossible.

I would like to challenge the notion of fin’amor as an ideal love and posit it where it belongs, among men. The creation of a female ideal to be risen atop a pedestal is the medieval equivalent of modern day concepts of beauty that glorify a woman for unattainable spiritual and intellectual acumen. It was supposedly love that transcended all earthly quality, considered in line with Platonic ideals, all the while bridging the gap between lovers on a metaphysical plane. In other words, it did not celebrate women, but rather the way men wished women would be, and the qualities expressed in each song were reliant on a repertoire of topoi, further indicating the rigidity of the form and the constraints into which the subject, the woman, was placed.

Here would perhaps be an ideal place to get into the logistics of what becoming the subject of these songs meant, especially when looking at them in terms of Foucault and even more effectively, Althusser, where subjectivity and interpolation would become the living definition of these women. However, I am going to save this for perhaps a larger project, and rather jump into the female interpretation of this genre.

If it has not already, it should now become apparent that women writing these poems would be at a loss for inspiration. They understood their own shortcomings, and would not eagerly participate in idealizing their own. Thus when women spoke they had two options: to occupy the place of man and falsely attribute perfection to fellow woman, or to invert the roles and speak as women raising men onto the same pedestals. More often than not, they took the former approach in which women were further objectified by their own under the guise of pleading their cases, justifying their existence within the tradition. In other words, they acquiesced to the men’s charges of their perfection, and needed to find a means of validating them.

However, there were some that used the form for their own ends and poetry became the tool for systematically demolishing these false ideologies. However, as Audre Lorde has warned, the master’s tools can never be used to dismantle his house, only to disturb it temporarily. Even though the handful of Trobairitz did not overturn patriarchy (surprise!) they created enough of a disruption to, at the very least, draw attention to its conventions elucidating its modus operandi, and showing that these forms of expression were not what they appeared.

These small subversive acts were mainly conducted by appropriating the language of the Troubadours and using it to describe men in the same fashion they regarded women. Immediately it became apparent that there was a certain impossibility to the catalog of traits heaped upon these men, and the women’s voices sounded with the same deceitfulness as they had themselves encountered. Before this post gets too much longer, here is a sample of a surviving Trobairitz song by Beatritz de Dia – “A chantar m’er” – a song which has survived to today, and can still be replicated with its original chords (video below) as opposed to all the other poems that have since lost their accompanying melodies.

(Beatritz (Contessa) de Dia – Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS fr. 12473)

A chantar m’er de so qu’ieu non volria
Tant me cancur de lui cui sui amia,
Car ieu l’am mais que nuilla ren que sia;
Vas lui no.m val merces ni cortesia
Ni ma beltatz ni mos pretz ni mos sens,
C’atressi.m sui enganad’e trahia
Com degr’esser, s’ieu fos desavinens.

Meravill me com vostre cors s’orguoilla
Amics, vas me, per qu’ai razon qu’ieu.m duoilla
Non es ges dreitz c’autre’amors vos mi tuoilla
Per nuilla ren qe’us diga ni acuoilla;
E membre vos cals fo.l comenssamens
De nostre’amor! ja Dompnedieus non vuoilla
Qu’en ma colpa sia.l departimens.

Valer mi deu mos pretz e mos paratges
E ma beltatz e plus mos fis coratges,
Per qu’ieu vos man lai on es vostr’estatges
Esta chansson que me sia messatges:
Ieu vuoill saber, lo mieus bels amics gens,
Per que vos m’etz tant fers ni tant salvatges,
Non sai, si s’es orguoills o maltalens.

Mas aitan plus voill qu.us diga.l messatges
Qu’en trop d’orguoill ant gran dan maintas gens.

I must sing of that which I want not,
As I am angry with the one I love,
For I love him more than anything;
He cares not for mercy or courtliness
Not my beauty, nor my merit nor my good sense,
For I am deceived and betrayed
Exactly as I should be, if I were ugly.

I marvel at how proud you have become,
Friend, towards me, and thus I have reason to grieve.
It is not right that another lover take you from me
On account of anything said or granted to you.
And remember how it was at the beginning
Of our love! may the Lord God never wish
That my guilt be the cause of our separation.

My worth and my nobility,
My beauty and my faithful heart should help me;
That is why I send this song to your dwelling
This song that might be my messenger.
I want to know my fair and noble friend,
Why you are so cruel and harsh with me;
I don’t know if it is pride or ill will.

But I especially want the messenger to tell you
That many people suffer from too much pride.

(note: although I typically like to do my own translations, I have to admit this song was quite difficult in certain places, so here I have relied on the translation from Rosenberg et. al. but I have modified it where I thought it was appropriate – their translation is absolutely beautiful, whereas mine is more in line with my style that is mot a mot).

Two facets of this poem caught my attention. First, she loves him as she says, “more than anything,” meaning, more than is possible. He is proud and unkind, presumably having left her for another, yet she does not allow this to guide her decision of love. Despite his multiple faults, he is here seen as perfect, or as he should be, which is an echo of Troubadour poems that capture feminine ideal beauty despite that the subject may be far from fair.

Secondly, she is angry. Unrequited courtly love was supposed to garner silent, suffering patience. The courtly lover, playing his part, pined away endlessly without hope for even a glance from his love interest. He did not reproach her for her cold conduct. Here Beatritz, while lamenting her current state, conforming to the ritual of a weakened lover also overthrows these same notions, starkly pointing out how ridiculous silence and patience really are. He may be perfect, even if only in her eyes, but his knowledge of said perfection, and the ensuing pride, will be his downfall. Her song does not end with a promise of never ending affection, but with a warning.

This is but one example of a rich tradition that deserves much more exploration. Over the next few months I hope to uncover more and form deeper connections. Further, just like with my Female Scribe project that is still very much a work in progress, I want to situate this work in context with other pieces and other Trobairitz. Unfortunately the majority of these women individually are obscured, with some of the only knowledge we have of them coming from their vidas that have in most cases survived in tatters, and unlike vitas, are notoriously unreliable. However, even without absolute attribution of these works to various figures, I think this project holds great potential, so I suppose I will consider this Part I.

In the meantime, I leave you with the actual melody of the poem above:

Sources:

Bogin, Meg. The Female Troubadours.

Bruckner, Matilda T. “Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours.”

Peraino, Judith. Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self Expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut.

Rosenberg, Samuel, Margaret Switten, and Gerard Le Vot. Eds. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies.

Shapiro, Marianne. “The Provencal Trobairitz and the Limits of Courtly Love.”

Butterfly Crossing

quanto desiderat astra papilio volitans

Tag Archives: medieval

The Trobairitz Tradition Continued

The Knight Templar, His Origin, and Role

The Trobairitz Tradition