In the early 12th century, a group of courtly poets
emerged in the south of France (the area known
as Provence) composing love songs in Old Occitan.
The basic concept of their poetry was the idea of
fin’amors: a cultured, sophisticated form of love
that aimed for the exploration of emotions, courtly
behavior, and the playful interaction of men and
women within an erotic context (often called, in
modern times, COURTLY LOVE). The troubadours
often allude to their sexual desires, but they seldom
imply any sexual fulfillment because their poetry
was predicated on the notion of unrequited love
inspired by fear, hope, longing, and desire.
There are many theories regarding the origin of
troubadour poetry, but no conclusive evidence has
ever answered this complex question. No antecedents
are known to us, unless we consider early
medieval Latin poetry by Baudri of Bourgueil and
Marbode of Rennes, for instance, as a decisive
source of influence. Another possibility might have
been the Mozarabic poets in Spain, who also composed
so-called KHARJAS, vernacular strophes in Romance
dialect (Hispano-Arabic) that conclude their
love songs in classical Arabic. Scholars have also
pointed to the renewed and intensive interest in the
Virgin Mary from the early 12th century on, whom
the troubadours might have had in mind when they
sang songs of adulation of their beloved ladies.
Moreover, in 12th-century Provence many courts
were nearly deserted because a large percentage of
noblemen had joined the crusades to the Holy Land
and often never returned from the wars. It could
have been that the large number of ladies left behind
invited the remaining aristocratic poets to embark
on a new cult of courtly love to fill the void. Possibly
the crusaders were inspired by Arabic love poetry
that they had heard of in Palestine and began to
create their own songs after their return home. But
it is equally possible that troubadour poetry
emerged indigenously because, due to improved climatic, economic, and hence financial conditions,
the higher aristocracy was being transformed into a
leisure class with a taste for a new type of sophisticated
erotic entertainment.
Etymologically the troubadour is a male poet
who composes a song (trobar) or finds a melody.
We also know of a small group of female poets, the
trobairitz, who joined their male counterparts in
the game of creating courtly love poetry.Whereas
courtly love was first practiced in the south, by the
late 12th century this cultural development had
reached central and northern France, where the
poets were called trouvères. The ideals of courtly
love were concurrently and subsequently explored
by the Middle High German MINNESÄNGer and, by
the early 13th century, by south Italian and Sicilian
poets.
The first known troubadour was GUILLAUME IX,
duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers (1071–
1127), who already demonstrated an amazing versatility
in his poetry, composing both a song of
fin’amors, about striving for unrequited love, and a
downright bawdy love song, then a nonsense poem,
and a religious song dealing with the departure
from this world.MARCABRU, who belongs to the following
generation, created the prototype of the PASTOURELLE,
in which a male wooer tries to
seduce—though unsuccessfully—a shepherdess
who knows how to confound the man rhetorically.
Marcabru also introduced a variety of different love
scenes, perhaps even the topic of conjugal love.
Some of the best-known 12th-century troubadours
were Jaufre RUDEL, PEIRE D’ALVERNHE, RAIMBAUT
D’ORANGE, BERNART DE VENTADORN, BERTRAN DE
BORN, GIRAUT DE BORNELH, ARNAUT DANIEL, FOLQUET
DE MARSEILLE, RAIMBAUT DE VAQUEIRAS, Peire
VIDAL, and Peire CARDENAL. Many troubadours introduced
their poems with images of nature, either
winter or summer, depending on the theme of the
song, whether the lover feels happy or sad, such as
in the case of CERCAMON’s “Qant la douch’aura s’amarcis”
(“When the sweet breeze turns bitter”) or
Jaufré Rudel’s “Lanquan li jorn son lonc en mai”
(“When the days are long in May”).
In the middle of the 12th century, Peire
d’Alvernhe and Raimbaut d’Orange idealized the
concept of TROBAR CLUS (closed composition, or arcane
poetry) versus TROBAR LEU (easy composition,
or light poetry). By the end of the 12th century, the
Catalan Raimon Vidal wrote a treatise explaining
the nature of troubadour poetry, the Règles de trobar
(Rules of composition). In the 12th century,
many of the traditional troubadours were so admired
that other poets created more or less fictional
biographical VIDAS (lives) and RAZOS
(reasons), which were appended to the text collections
and stated the poet’s birth date and social
rank, and described the type of poetry he wrote.
While the earliest troubadour poems prove to be
highly refreshing and innovative, the vast number
of subsequent compositions by the 13th century
tend to be very formalistic, rhetorically styled,
repetitive, and obviously intended for public performance
for courtly audiences.
During the first 140 years these courtly love
poems were mostly handed down orally; the first
manuscript with troubadour poetry dates from as
late as 1254. The vast popularity of troubadour poetry
is testified by 95 manuscripts still extant from
the late Middle Ages. Only four of these manuscripts
contain musical notation, and the melodies
are copied down only nonmensurally, ignoring the
rhythm and duration of each individual note. The
entire tradition of troubadour poetry was anchored
in an oral culture, and its preservation in
manuscripts was only the result of a preservation
effort by later generations. The earliest troubadours
called their poems simply cansos, or vers
(songs). Later poets differentiated between CANSOS,
dealing with the ideal of fin’amors, and SIRVENTES,
satires of personal, political, and moral shortcomings.
Subcategories of troubadour poetry were the
pastourelle; the ALBA—a dawn song in which man
and woman, after they have spent a night together,
are awakened in the morning and have to separate;
the Crusade song—the lover has to go on a Crusade
and laments the need to leave his mistress behind;
the planh—funeral lament; and the
TENSO—a DEBATE POEM in which man and woman
explore the meaning of love or argue against each
other about the significance of courtly love. Troubadour
poetry comprises 2,542 compositions by
about 450 poets; about 250 of these songs are accompanied
by music.
Bibliography
Akehurst, F. R. P., and Judith M. Davis, eds. A Handbook
of the Troubadours. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995.
Gaunt, Simon, and Sarah Kay, eds. The Troubadours:
An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. Lyrics of the Troubadours
and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973.
Hill, Raymond Thompson, and Thomas Goddard
Bergin, eds.Anthology of the Provençal Troubadours.
2nd ed.Revised by T. G. Bergin with Susan Olson et
al.New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973.
Jensen, Frede, ed. and trans. Troubadour Lyrics: A
Bilingual Anthology. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.
von der Werf, Hendrik. The Chansons of the Troubadours
and Trouvères: A Study of the Melodies and
Their Relation to the Poems. Utrecht, Netherlands:
Oosthoek, 1972.
Wilhelm, James J., trans. Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An
Anthology. New York and London: Garland, 1990.
Albrecht Classen