Trobar Cor(s): Erotics and poetics in Flamenca

537 Pages·2006·3.06 MB·English

by  Juliet Lucy Anne O’Brien

Trobar Cor(s): Erotics and Poetics in Flamenca

Juliet Lucy Anne O’Brien

A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE
BY THE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN

June 2006
UMI Number: 3208895
UMI Microform3208895
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Abstract

This dissertation aims to make greater sense of Flamenca through close
reading, seeing Flamenca as a literary hybrid crossing French and Occitan
cultures. It draws on intertextual parallels between Flamenca and a substantial
corpus of 12th-13th c. literature, across both cultures: Occitan lyric poetry, debate
poetry, poetics treatises, and verse narrative; and French romance.
Trobar Cor(s) reads Flamenca as a subversive courtly romance about
finding true love.
Trobar (“finding”) is key to Occitan poetics and erotics. “Finding the true”
extends trobar into epistemology and ethics. Subversion expands ideas of
medieval creativity into derivative ingenuity; in a positive critical sense, opening
the text and enriching meaning in semantic destabilization.
Trobar’s object is the cor (“heart”) or cors (“body, course”), also alluding to
the cort (“court”). Flamenca explores trobar in various searches for love,
questioning sincerity and investigating true love. One option is amor cortesa
(“courtly love”). I reopen the “courtly love debate” in the context of a second,
related idea and amorous ideal: amor coral, a love to do with the heart and parity.
I cross trobar clus (“closed finding”) with amor cortesa, to produce new ideas of
“closed love” and “courtly poetry,” leading to an erotic and poetic “lyric
entrapment” of amorous imprisonment and compositional problems, and to new
understanding of trobar.
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Flamenca recounts a love-triangle, whose focalization shifts amongst
three protagonists. To make sense of events, the reader must bear all three
points of view in mind. The dissertation’s three central chapters present readings
from the perspectives of each protagonist, in multiple, “choose your own
adventure” reading. Each chapter follows a protagonist’s pursuit of love,
enactment of an intertextually allusive “lyric narrative,” and attempts to escape
lyric entrapment.
Multiple narrative voices parallel multiple focalizations. Both multiplicities
are necessary to good reading, which must afford them equivalent status, take
them into account (parity), and balance them (mesura, akin to Aristotelian ethical
measure) to make sense of the narrative and interpret it fairly. Flamenca deploys
what I call “arch-players” to experiment with entwined ideas of authorship and
authority, play with distinctions between narrative roles, and expand that of the
audience.

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Contents

Abstract iii
Contents v
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Flamenca 1
The text and this dissertation’s reading 1
History of the text: manuscript and editions 11
Historical contexts: language, ideas, and literature 16

1. Contexts erotic and poetic: trobar amor clusa e cortesa 27
1.1 Erotics: from Ovid to the courtly love debate 34
1.2 Poetics: the canso, and clus/cortes as lyric imprisonment 80
1.3 Reading Flamenca as a canso of amor cortesa 125

2. The Canso de Guillem: release from trobar clus 144
2.1 Guillem as aman-trobador 147
2.2 Escape into fantasy 154
2.3 Breaking free into a place of one’s own 191
2.4 The subversive trobador 220

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3. The Canso-tenso de Flamenca: alternative trobar 241
3.1 Flamenca comes to life and becomes a trobairitz 242
3.2 Dialogue in parity: tenso 284
3.3 Idealised amor coral 322
3.4 The rejection of delusional fantasy 355

4. The Roman d’Archimbaut: trobar and appropriation 370
4.1 Archimbaut perverts trobar 371
4.2 Narrative voices and other “arch-players” 389
4.3 Resignation to courtly rehabilitation and control 431

Conclusion: Beyond Flamenca – audience, ethics, and trobar 445

Bibliography 467

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to my advisers: Sarah Kay, François Rigolot, and Karl D. Uitti.

Also, thanks to: Ron Akehurst, Raf Alvarado, Adrian Armstrong, Karen Bauer,
Hugh Bolton, Katherine Brown, Bill Burgwinkle, Arudra Burra, Meredith Cain, Bill
Calin, Helen Chown, Maria Chudnovsky, Kathleen Davis, Valérie Dionne, John
V. Fleming, Shellie Garceau, Guy Geltner, Erica Gilles, Holly Grieco, Mo Halford,
Sarah-Grace Heller, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Thomas Horine, Sylvia Huot, Hannah
Johnson, Margaret Kerr-Shanks, John Logan, Andy Love, Frank McGurk, B.
Madison Mount, Cynthia Nazarian, Francesca Nicholson, Chris Noble, Lucien
Nouis, Leonora O’Brien, Anne and George O’Brien, Amy Ogden, Effie Rentzou,
Molly Robinson-Kelly, Jesse Scott, Lior Silberman, Ellen Thorington, Stefan
Vander Elst, Liz Wray, and Wes Yu.

Particular thanks to Chris Mole.

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Dedicated to the memory of Karl D. Uitti

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Introduction: Flamenca

The text and this dissertation’s reading

The subject of this dissertation is Flamenca, an 8095-line-long Old Occitan
work in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, probably dating from the later 13th century.
It apparently disappeared from the European literary scene until the early 19th
century, and then became a consistent subject of literary study during the last
two centuries, or this academic field’s entire history.
The feature that has most often been regarded as a sign of Flamenca’s
literary merit is its intimate and subtle portrayal of character. The trend is already
evident through the 19th century, and linked to developments in the psychological
novel; Romance philologists of the time praise what they view as Flamenca’s
realism. The 20th century propagation of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis
into literary criticism has also, more recently, influenced readings of Flamenca.
While Flamenca has long been recognized as a core work in the medieval
Occitan literary canon, and is known in medievalist circles, it remains largely
unknown to the larger community of literary criticism. Recent work in medieval
literary study has started to interact with the larger critical community and to draw
its attention. The barriers between modern and pre-modern may be coming
down, as has already happened with other marginal entities such as feminine,
1