The troubadours and the crafting of literary authority

254 Pages·2010·5.31 MB·English

by  Courtney J. Wells

BOSTON UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Dissertation
THE TROUBADOURS AND THE CRAFTING OF LITERARY AUTHORITY
by
COURTNEY J. WELLS
B.A., University of Dallas, 2003
M.A., Boston University, 2005
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2010
UMI Number: 3411788
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Acknowledgments
I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my advisor, Prof. Irit Kleiman,
whose advice and guidance has steered me in the proper direction at every turn
of this project. Her unfaltering attention and patience have been a constant
source of encouragement throughout the writing of this dissertation. I would
also like to thank Prof. Robert Levine of the English Department, who has been
there at every step of this dissertation to suggest new approaches, new sources,
and new perspectives. I am indebted to both of them, although any of the faults
or weaknesses of this dissertation are strictly my own.
I would also like to thank the members of the French faculty of the
Department of Romance Studies here at Boston University, especially Prof.
Elizabeth Goldsmith, Prof. Dorothy Kelly, and Prof. Jeffrey Mehlman. They have
been continual sources of encouragement, support, and advice.
I also wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues in the Department of
Romance Studies, especially Canaan Boyer, Elizabeth Frohlich, Amine Rahmouni
El Idrissi, and Lesley Yoder, for their friendship and encouragement over these
many years. I would also like to thank Seth Holm in the Department of Classical
Studies, without whose help and generosity I would not have been able to
continue my studies of the Latin language.
I will never be able to adequately express my admiration and thanks to
my wife and tireless proofreader, Elizabeth Wells. I cannot count how many
dinners, vacations, and free moments she patiently devoted to hearing about the
troubadours. My debt of gratitude to her is greater than I can express. Finally, I
iii
wish to thank my son, Julian, hardly a year old, who has already become a daily
reminder of the fathomless joys of learning and of love.
This dissertation is dedicated to Aimee Cowan and Filomena DaCosta,
who are no longer here to see its completion.
IV
THE TROUBADOURS AND THE CRAFTING OF LITERARY AUTHORITY
(Order No. )
COURTNEY J. WELLS
Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2010
Major Professor: Irit Ruth Kleiman, Assistant Professor of French
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines practices and theories of vernacular authorship
in the works of the troubadours of southern France, and the influence these
practices had on later poets of Catalonia and Italy. It examines how developing
notions of vernacular authorship represent both a rupture with and a
continuation of Latin definitions of the auctor.
The first chapter examines the poetry of Guilhem IX, Duke of Aquitaine
and Count of Poitiers, and evaluates the importance of Guilhem's political
authority in his development of new categories of vernacular authorship that go
beyond Latin definitions of the auctor. The second chapter is an analysis of
vernacular and Latin references made to Guilhem's vassal and rival, the
troubadour Eble II of Ventadorn, and how, although none of his poems have
survived today, his status as literary authority in the poetry of the troubadours of
the second and third generations served as a sort of pole star by which future
troubadours oriented and authorized their own vernacular poetic projects.
The third and fourth chapters study how the Catalan troubadour, Raimon
Vidal, and the Occitan-born troubadour, Uc de Saint-Circ, introduce the works of
v
the "classical" troubadours to foreign audiences in Catalonia and Italy,
respectively. Chapter three focuses on Vidal's comparison of Old Occitan with
Latin in his grammatical treatise, the Razos de Trobar, and his treatment of the
troubadours of southern France as quotable literary authorities in his narrative
works. Chapter four evaluates Uc de Saint-Circ's use of the Latin grammar-
school texts, the accessus ad auctores, as literary models for his vidas (biographies)
and razos (commentaries), which he uses to introduce the Occitan troubadours to
a foreign Italian audience.
In each of these troubadours' works, there is a discernible influence of
medieval definitions of the Latin auctor upon perspectives on vernacular
authorship. Conversely, each of these troubadours' works displays an acute
anxiety in its relationship to the Latin definitions of the author. The space in
between these two reflexes of imitation and differentiation provides us with a
framework in which the outlines of the vernacular author can be discerned. This
dissertation is a contribution to that outline.
vi
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: "Cavalier, datz mi conseill": Feudal Authority and
Vernacular Authorship in the Poetry of Guilhem IX of Poitiers 41
Chapter 2: Phantom Authority: Eble II of Ventadorn's Status as
Auctor for Later Generations of Troubadours 80
Chapter 3: Translatio Studii: Raimon Vidal and the Vernacular
Author in France 117
Chapter 4: Uc de Saint-Circ's Ecole Buissonniere: A Study of the
Lives of the Troubadours and the Accessus ad auctores in Italy 172
Conclusions 227
Bibliography 230
Curriculum Vitae 243
vn
Introduction
La naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort
de l'Auteur—Roland Barthes1
Le sujet que j'ai propose: "Qu'est-ce qu'un
auteur?", il me faut, evidemment, le justifier un
peu devant vous—Michel Foucault2
En verite, s'interesser a l'expression litteraire du
sujet par lui-meme est presque a l'heure actuelle
une provocation—Michel Zink3
As these epigraphs would suggest, a study of the role of the medieval
author in the texts of the chansonniers requires some justification. And yet, it is
surprising that it does. It has been more than forty years now since Roland
Barthes sounded the death knell of author-based criticism, and very few
medievalists could argue with the shift of critical focus from the figure of the
medieval author to the medieval text. Names such as Jaufre Rudel, Marcabru,
Bernart de Ventadorn, Peire Vidal, Raimbaut de Vaqueyras, Raimon Vidal, Uc de
Saint-Circ, Blondel de Nesle, and Chatelain de Coucy, to name a few, do not
designate identifiable historical poets, but serve rather to delineate a corpus of
poems that has been handed down to us by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
chansonniers. Although names such as Gaufredus Rudelli4 and Bernardus Monachus
1 Roland Barthes, "Mort de 1'auteur," in Oeuvres completes, III: 1968-1971 (Paris: Edition du Seuil,
2002), 40-5 (45).
2 Michel Foucault, "Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?" Dits et ecrits: 1954-1988,1:1954-1975 (Paris:
Gallimard, 2001), 817-49 (819).
3 Michel Zink, La subjectivite litteraire: autour du siecle de saint Louis (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1985), 5.
4 For what little historical background exists on Jaufre Rudel, see Martin de Riquer, Los trovadores,
vol. 1 (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1989), 148-54.
2
et Abbas Tutelensis5 [Bernart the monk and abbot of Tulle] appear in an occasional
historical document, these names tell us very little about either the historical life
of the troubadour or the poetry that is attributed to him. In addition to the
complexity of the historical connection between medieval author and text, the
medieval text also complicates the interpretive connection between author and
text since manuscript traditions often offer radically different readings of the
same work, and sometimes even attribute the same work to different authors.
Later authors often "continue" or "finish" the work of previous ones, such as in
the continuations of Le conte du graal of Chretien de Troyes and the second part of
Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la rose written by Jean de Meun. Even texts that
do not have many variants between manuscripts are often subjected, as is the
case with the lyric, to restructuring, rearrangement of lines or stanzas, or a
change of the dialect in which it was composed:
Telle chanson de troubadour, transmise par plusieurs chansonniers,
differe de l'un a l'autre par le nombre et l'ordre des strophes, meme si le
texte de celles-ci comporte peu de variantes. Mais ce n'est pas la pur
hasard: la strophe initiale reste identique; l'envoi, toujours final.
L'"oeuvre" flotte, s'entoure moins de frontieres que d'un halo ou se
produisent d'incessantes mutations.6
This phenomenon of textual fluctuation in the lyric is called mouvance by Paul
Zumthor: "L'oeuvre est fondamentalement mouvante," he says; "c'est moins
d'un achievement qu'un texte en train de se faire."7 Under such conditions of
See William Paden, "Bernart de Ventadour le troubadour devint-il abbe de Tulle?" in Melanges
de langue et de litterature occitanes en homage a Pierre Bee (Poitiers: C.E.S.C.M., 1991), 401-13. Tulle
is the capital of the departement Correze, where the castle Ventadorn is located, some 35
kilometers away.
Paul Zumthor, Essai de poetique medievale (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972), 71-2.
Zumthor, Essaz, 73.