SOURCE: Egan, Margarita. Introduction to The Vidas of the Troubadours, translated by Margarita Egan, pp. xiii-xxxii. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984.

[In the following excerpt, Egan provides an overview of the lives of the troubadours, including their structure, purpose, and perspective.]

A noble and beautiful lady, a minstrel singing her praise, amorous intrigues and gossip in the castle of the wealthy feudal lords: such are typical elements of the world of the medieval love lyric which even today spark the imagination of writers and poets. Sources of these themes characteristic of troubadour love poetry can be traced to the princely circles of twelfth-century Southern France—the world of the Provençal poets. In later centuries, themes of troubadour love also appeared in prose, including the biographies of the troubadours, the vidas (lives), written in Old Provençal.

These texts, which have been little studied for their literary qualities, represent a vital link between the didactic tradition of the Middle Ages (commentaries, glosses on classical texts, exemplary lives of saints) and the fictional short stories of the Renaissance, such as the thirteenth-century collection of tales known as the Novellino and, later, Boccaccio's Decameron. Thus the vidas, the first literary biographies in a Romance tongue, can be examined as an important stage in the development of European narrative. At the same time these lively accounts allow modern readers to share the nostalgia and curiosity of the medieval audience about the poets of Provence (see Jeanroy, Poésie lyrique, I, 109-149; Favati, Biografie, pp. 11-109; Boutière-Schutz, Biographies, pp. viii-xlvii; complete details in Select Bibliography).

AUTHORS AND TEXTS

The vidas of the troubadours appear in the manuscripts as short introductions to and commentaries on the poets' lyrics. Some of the collections of troubadour poems—chansonniers—present vidas as prefaces to the verse selections. The earliest chansonniers with vidas date from the middle to the late thirteenth century. The first collection is generally placed between 1250 and 1280 (Avalle, Letteratura, p. 106; Favati, pp. 49, 65, 105; Boutière-Schutz, p. x). However, later evidence suggests that by the fourteenth century the vidas had achieved the status of an independent literary genre. Manuscripts from that period group them together, separated from the Provençal lyrics (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds Français 22543 and 1749; Rome, Biblioteca Chigi, 1 iv 106). In any case, we do not know when the vidas were first composed, since the texts may have passed through several stages of formulation prior to their appearance in the first chansonniers.

The authorship of the vidas is generally uncertain, since only two of the 110 vidas are signed. Although most vidas are anonymous, it is widely assumed that they were composed by exiles from Provence living in Italy (Boutière, “Quelques observations,” “Les italianismes,” and “Les 3e personnes”). Beyond that assumption however, the literary and historical circumstances of their composition have hardly been examined. How and why were the vidas devised? For what audience? By contrast to our relative ignorance about the vidas, we are well informed about the authors and circumstances of the troubadour lyrics. The earliest poetry of Romance vernacular flourished in twelfth-century Provence, where, in noble halls, poets and joglars (minstrels) performed melodies and songs, usually expressing love themes. Their admiring audiences were ladies, lords, and courtiers, all with a taste for art, music, and polished poetry (Zumthor, pp. 466-75). But can the “lives” of the troubadours somehow be traced back to the same occasions and settings of the lyrics? How did the vidas come into existence, and do they bear any direct relationship to the poetry which they introduced in the manuscripts? Perhaps the best approach to these questions is to examine the texts of the vidas themselves. Then we shall consider this “internal evidence” in light of the literary and historical background of the later stages of the troubadour lyric, that is, the thirteenth century, the period of the first vida manuscripts.

ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT: THE VIDAS AS STORIES

The charming and anecdotal vidas have lamentably remained on the fringes of scholarly interest ever since they were first perceived to be historically unreliable. Critics long ago dismissed them as fanciful and fictitious (see, most recently, Guida); scholars have failed to realize that, though the vidas contain much historically unattestable information, they nonetheless comprise an independent literary genre of some importance. General ignorance about these texts has been reinforced by the absence of a systematic examination of their content and structure which will here be sketched.

Two basic issues must be considered: how people and actions are described by the authors of the vidas, and what elements the texts have in common. Several terms used in the vidas to introduce poets, ladies, and patrons recur frequently. Words such as savis, enseignat, cortes, and larcs commonly appear in the vidas, where “learnedness, wisdom,” (see Vidas 28, 41, 50, 75, 76, 97), “courtliness” (27, 38, 43, 46, 72, 97) and “generosity” (27, 93) are ideals of behavior and character. Predictably, good poets are always good wooers of ladies, who are themselves always described as bellas (beautiful). Among the few women in the vidas, only seven are poets: 8, 12, 23, 26, 63, 65, 96. Moreover, the poets are at ease among the nobility, and are well-schooled (see 6, 46, 56, 67, 72, 82). Also typical are troubadours who are versed in the active ideals of courtliness and who exhibit knightly talents: Bertran de Born, for example, is said to be very able in battle (17; see also 38, 91). Troubadours are almost always described as talented composers of music and verse, “subtle in words and in understanding” (4; also 14, 17, 36, 41, 59); some biographers, however, do not hesitate to criticize the quality of a poet's verses (28, 30, 32, 64, 77), or to tell of his lack of popularity (42, 87).

Interestingly, not only are the words similar which are used to present the individual characters of the poets, but the arrangement of the words is uniform as well. The terms that describe persons tend to occur in set patterns, in such a way that the name and place of origin of the protagonist, his social status, and his character nearly always appear in the same order. Sail d'Escola, his vida tells us, was from Bergerac, from a rich town in Périgord, the son of a merchant. He became a jongleur or minstrel and made good little songs (92). The biography of Bertran d'Alamanon describes its subject in a similarly formulaic way: Bertran, we are told, was from Provence, the son of Pons de Brugeiras; he was a courtly knight who was eloquent in speech (16; 14A and B, 37, 82, 101).

Characters of secondary importance in the poet's story (ladies, patrons, and others) are seldom described in detail. More often than not, they are only named, although in a few cases a description of the poet's profession or social status helps to portray them (“and he loved a burgher from Orlac, whose name was my lady Galiana,” 45; see also 10, 11, 12, 29, 40, 82, 83).

Thus far, we can say that different vidas describe their subjects in surprisingly similar ways, and that certain patterns reappear throughout the corpus. Whether the vida is long or short, whether it concerns a celebrated or lesser troubadour, it typically portrays its subject in a formulaic way. The question we must now pose is: are these patterns part of larger and more complex patterns? Besides telling us similar things about who the troubadours were, do the “lives” also tell us similar things about what they did? Are the activities of different poets analogous to one another? Are there narrative patterns as well as descriptive ones in the troubadour biographies? How do such patterns relate to one another?

The themes of love and patronage occur in varying contexts throughout the vidas. Let us now examine how these themes are woven together into the “lives” and also what formal elements the different accounts of a troubadour's amorous and political adventures have in common. The simplest vidas appear as static portraits of the troubadours: they tell us something about the poet and the fact that he composed poetry. Sometimes the poet is described in detail; at other times we are told what types of poems he wrote and what sorts of melodies he devised. But in general these brief “portrait vidas” consist only of a sequence of qualifiers describing the poet's attributes and a short narrative sequence recounting his poetic composition (4, 12, 36, 38, 43, 47, 59, 61, 70, 85, 89). Although this basic scheme is changed occasionally, exceptions are rare (34, 36, 45, 70, 89, 95).

As an example, let us take the vida of Richart de Tarascon (No. 90):

Richart de Tarascon was a knight from Provence, from the castle of Tarascon. He was a good knight and a good composer of poems and a good servant of ladies. And he composed good sirventes and good songs.

This account contains only two sequences: a descriptive sequence (“Richart … ladies”) followed by a narrative sequence (“And … good songs”). Similar is the structure of all brief vidas, which can be summarized by the following statements, each indicating a compositional unit:

Poet is described
Poet composed poems

It is clear that these simple “portrait vidas” are really no more than a joining of the basic descriptive structure with the briefest of narrative sequences. This biographical kernel provides the core of the increasingly complex narrative structures which comprise the longer vidas. As an example, let us turn to those vidas that we might call “portrait stories.”

In this group of texts, wandering troubadours seek support and protection from wealthy nobles, and they meet with success or failure. Most such vidas tell of the poet being welcomed and accepted into the courtly milieu, given material riches, honor and praise (1, 22, 29, 33, 52, 66, 75, 80, 87, 101). Patronage stories underline the economic importance of courtly politics for the troubadour; without the support of a noble friend, the poet would be forced to abandon his craft. Only within the context of the court could he manage to survive. Therefore in those vidas whose subjects fail to secure patronage, for example, poets leave to join religious orders or wander from court to court and country to country in search of friends (33, 52).

Patronage stories generally consist of a descriptive sequence describing the poet and a narrative sequence recounting his relations with sponsors. Or, to state the elements schematically:

Poet is described
Poet composed songs
Poet had patron
Patron accepted poet

This model in itself becomes more complex as it is embellished in other patronage stories. Some poets, for example, react to a patron's rejection by taking action themselves. When they cease to be passive objects of another's wishes, the poet-protagonists subsequently affect the outcome of the plot. Rejected by patrons, these poets leave court, join monastic orders (abandon the secular world), or simply stop singing.

A schematic representation of these longer patronage stories might be summarized as follows:

Poet is described
Poet composed songs
Poet had patron
Patron rejected poet
As a result, poet left secular world or poetry

Rejection and acceptance are also dominant motifs in the next group of vidas which we can characterize as love stories. By contrast to patronage stories, which tend to include at most one subject in addition to the poet, love stories usually have three or more. Here as before, other personages act, causing the poet to react. Typically the biography tells us that a troubadour loved a lady whose affection he desired. Love inspired his song. In the basic scheme, the lady reciprocates the poet's love. He composes lyrics exalting her and performs other worthy deeds in her honor (15, 37, 83, 84):

Poet is described
Poet loved lady
Lady loved poet
As a result, poet composed songs

Within certain love stories, a stable liaison will be ended by one of the lovers. Ladies sometimes enter nunneries (60, 86), abandon their lovers (76, 87, 91, 98), or die (29, 33, 58, 82). The poet-lover responds to these events by going away, taking the cross, or even going mad (29, 33, 58, 76, 82, 91, 92). When the poets die, their ladies take drastic steps or similar actions: Jaufre Rudel's lady becomes a nun, as does Raimon Jordan's (60, 86). Thus, once again, more complex love stories are built up from the basic unit seen in the simpler texts. In short, these longer love stories, in which the poet is rejected, can be schematized as follows:

Poet is described
Poet loved lady
Lady loved poet
As a result, poet composed songs
Lady rejected poet
As a result, poet left secular world or poetry;

or, in a different version (that in which the poet dies),

Poet loved lady
Lady loved poet
As a result, poet composed songs
Poet died
As a result, lady left secular world

With the appearance of a third personage, the plots of love stories expand accordingly. Opponents of the lovers (usually the lady's husband or brother) either reassert control over her or kill the poet, and the poet-lover has no choice in the matter. If he survives, he must leave the lady and abandon his courtship (see 3, 14, 53, 79). To summarize, these stories tell us:

Poet loved lady
Lady loved poet
As a result, poet composed songs
Opponent rejected poet and lady
As a result, poet left lady

When a fourth personage intervenes to counteract the opponent's action, the poet wins his lady back (39, 68, 73) or simply abducts her (94). The structure of these stories can be described as follows:

Poet loved lady
Lady loved poet
As a result, poet composed songs
Opponent rejected poet and lady
As a result, poet separated from lady (or lady rejected poet)
Helper aided poet
As a result, poet and lady were reunited

Again and again in the vidas, we have seen that the protagonists remain essentially the same, as do, for the most part, their actions. But if so many patterns of form and content appear in the corpus, more difficult questions now confront us. Why do the vidas of more than one hundred troubadours resemble one another so much? What circumstances led different authors composing biographies of so many different poets to follow the same basic thematic and structural framework? How and why were they created?

PURPOSE OF THE VIDAS: LORE AND LEARNING

To approach the problem of the vidas' composition—who wrote them and for what reason—we must try to place the apparent patterns of form and content in a literary and historical context. Since most of our texts are anonymous, any discussion of origin and authorship must necessarily remain speculative, as has been the tradition of previous scholarship on these questions. Nonetheless, the foregoing formal analysis should provide a new and more helpful perspective. Let us begin by reviewing the kinds of information contained in the biographies.

Broadly speaking, the troubadour vidas provide information from two types of sources. First, there are certain biographical facts about the poets which can be shown to be derived from their poetry; for present purposes we may call such information “literary.” Second, there is material from sources unconnected with the poet's own verses, which we may call “non-literary.” In this latter case, the author of the vida provides facts drawn from witnesses to the life of the poet, such as his mistress, relatives, or acquaintances; the biographer may also have consulted written records about the poet, learned facts through hearsay, or simply invented some of the details in the troubadour “life.”

Unfortunately, the biographical elements of the vidas cannot always be neatly assigned to “literary” or “non-literary” categories. Some of the material drawn from the poems may be historical (though unverifiable) and certain seemingly non-literary facts may have been drawn from poems now lost to us. Since much of the information in the vidas is not easily traced to any known source, we must acknowledge the possibility of stages or processes of composition which cannot be uncovered. Within such limits, however, we may profitably examine the literary and non-literary material in greater detail.

Links between a troubadour's verse and the prose vida written about him are easily demonstrated on linguistic and thematic levels. Love and patronage are typical themes of the vida stories; this, of course, can be said of many lyrics as well. We also note that those vidas which develop non-romantic themes center on poets who did not sing of love. The biography of Bertran de Born (17), for instance, speaks of his ability to foment discord between the kings of France and England, and of the poet's well-known songs and debates on the virtues of war. The vida of Marcabru also tells of the poet's relations with other men: how the troubadour was hated by local nobles for his acrimonious verses decrying the falsity and superficiality of their lives (64). It is not surprising that these two vidas neglect to speak of love and courtliness, patrons or erotic intrigues. The verses of Bertran de Born and Marcabru have little to do with ladies and courtship.

The debt of the vidas to the lyrics is even more obvious when we examine linguistic borrowings. Firstly, all of the standard terms which we have seen used to describe poets, ladies, and patrons in the vidas appear in similar descriptions in the lyrics. Thus, troubadours in their poems call themselves cortes (courtly); their patrons are addressed as larcs (generous), and their ladies are portrayed as bellas (beautiful).

In addition, vidas often explain specific metaphors and proper nouns found in the poems, ascribing biographical significance to them. The troubadour Jaufre Rudel, for instance, sang of an elusive amor de lonh (far-away love) who is otherwise unidentified. His biographer interprets the phrase by creating a tale of simple and evocative power: Jaufre loves an unseen lady and must travel to the distant city of Tripoli to see her (60). Thus Jaufre's faint images of far-away love are made concretely biographical and—the author of the vida must have hoped—comprehensible for his audience. Similarly, Arnaut Daniel's unusual metaphor of a hunter on an ox (bou) chasing a hare inspires the biographer to recount the poet's affair with a lady from Bouvilla, literally “Ox City” (10). Here the author of the vida even cites the relevant lines of the poem as historical evidence for what we know to be sheer fancy. Most vidas in the corpus have some biographical “fact” about the poet drawn from a specific part of his verse.

Indeed, many Old Provençal biographies are inspired by the reading of a poem. The authors of vidas incorporated in what they perceived to be a “historical” framework words and ideas derived from the lyrics. Moreover, when particular metaphors or proper names from the poems stirred the biographer's imagination, he did not hesitate to include them in his account of the poet's “life.”

However, other elements of the vidas cannot be traced to the troubadour's poetry. When we have, for example, no linguistic or thematic evidence, either in the vida or in the troubadour's verse, to prove a link, we must consider the likelihood that the biographer made use of non-literary sources. Obvious examples of this kind of information include historical facts about the poet's birthplace, his social status, and his family background. Vidas occasionally include details about a troubadour's patrons, his beloved lady, or his religious persuasions—but in forms which suggest sources beyond the realm of the poet's own verse (Panvini, Biografie, pp. 17-18, 100-118).

How did the biographers of the vidas gain access to such information? The texts provide a few clues. Several vidas actually cite witnesses who reported directly to the author their personal knowledge about the poet. Raimbaut d'Aurenga's vida, for example, recounts how the poet's former mistress (later a nun) revealed the particulars of their romantic liaison (83). Uc de Saint Circ, composer of Bernart de Ventadorn's vida (14A), cites as his witness the poet's mistress' son:

And I, Lord Uc de Saint Circ, have written down … what was told to me by the viscount Lord Ebles de Ventadorn, who was the son of the viscountess whom Lord Bernart loved.

Other vidas cite sources of information which are less specific, and in many cases less direct. The author of Cadenet's vida (22), for example, admits to having gathered information “per auzir e per vezer” (by listening and seeing). Whether this means that he saw and listened to the poet or people who knew the poet or to people who only knew about the poet, we cannot tell; he may also have consulted some kind of written records which contained facts about Cadenet's life. The biographer of Peire d'Alvernhe (67) records as a source the name of another person from the same region (and, in fact, the same period) as the poet, one Dalfin d'Alvernhe. But there is no clue whether the biographer spoke directly with Dalfin or merely borrowed his facts second-hand, through conversation or reading. Finally, many of the historical facts in the vidas are linked to no source at all and may have been merely incorporated from contemporary (but lost) legends and stories about the troubadours (Panvini, Biografie, pp. 121-139).

Whatever the sources of the biographers' historical facts, the reliability of their information varies. Much can be shown to be accurate through comparison with external historical materials (charters, wills, chronicles, and other documents) which still survive. Among the vidas providing information which can be verified by existing documents is that of Jaufre Rudel (60). Although based in large part on the poet's verse, this text contains several accurate details about his life. Jaufre is, for instance, called a “prince.” Contemporary charters record that the lords of Blaye bore the title princeps, and thus we can safely assume that in real life our troubadour shared the title as well (see Panvini, Biografie, pp. 122-127; Cravayat). Other vidas with attestable historical details are that of Uc de Saint Circ (101), which gives precise topographical information about his birthplace; the “life” of Cadenet (22), which contains details of the poet's relations with patrons and other troubadours; and that of Folquet de Marseilla (33), which provides exact information about the controversial troubadour's retreat to the Abbey of Toronet (Stronski, Folquet de Marseille, pp. 87-90, 142).

But those same historical materials, as well as our modern common sense, will often demonstrate the opposite. The authors of the vidas sometimes make mistakes, ranging from the forgivable to the surprising. Guillem IX (Duke William IX of Aquitaine), for instance, is said by his biographer to have been the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine (46). He was, in fact, her great-grandfather, as medieval documents testify. Cadenet's otherwise knowledgeable biographer (22) also makes some errors. He claims, for example, that the poet took on the pseudonym “Baguas.” But this name, a masculine form of bagassa (prostitute), is not attested during Cadenet's lifetime (Appel, Cadenet, pp. 4, 94). Another imprecision, though minor, places Cadenet's home on the Durance River. The ruins of his castle are, in fact, several miles north of the river's shores.

Some “facts” of the vidas are neither accurate nor mistaken, but simply grew out of the authors' imaginations. Many are indistinguishable from historical facts whose sources are lost to us, but others are readily identifiable, and betray the authors' talents for invention. An obvious case of this kind of non-literary information about the troubadours is seen in the fabrication or explanation of proper names. The process is similar to the etymological glossing of words in the verses but differs in that the object of the gloss does not necessarily come out of the poems. In the vida of the early poet Cercamon (24), for example, the biographer gleans supposed facts merely on the basis of the poet's unusual name. “Cercamon,” which we can see to derive from cercar (to search, wander) and mon (world), is supposed to have reflected the impoverished troubadour's itinerant existence: the biographer claims that Cercamon “wandered all over the world, wherever he could go, and for this reason had himself called Cercamon.” Perplexing names thus become pretexts for elaborate explanations, in the same way that confusing metaphors in the poems inspire fanciful narrative episodes.

The multiple types of information in the vidas should warn us that the problems of their composition will not be easily solved. Furthermore, though patterns of form and content can be observed, there are enough variations among individual texts to suggest a less than uniform ancestry for the corpus. Nonetheless, it is worth pursuing the question of their origin and development in the light of what we have seen thus far.

Who composed vidas based on troubadour songs? The most obvious answer would be jongleurs or other troubadours. After all, they knew the poems well. It is not hard to imagine that a thirteenth-century troubadour or jongleur could recite at least a few poems composed by his mentors or simply by other well-known poets of earlier generations. Furthermore, many troubadours during the thirteenth century knew how to read and write (see 10, 29, 32, 41, 58); in fact, the two troubadours who are known to have composed vidas had been to school. They and other learned poets (a few others are attested) could have handled written as well as oral sources and applied their knowledge of troubadours to the composition of biographies, whether of predecessors or even contemporaries (see 101 and Panvini, Le Biografie, pp. 13-18; Lavaud, Peire Cardenal, pp. 608, 609, note 1).

The two vida texts with known authors provide a glimpse of the biographical process. In both the vida of Bernart de Ventadorn and that of Peire Cardenal, the respective composers, Uc de Saint Circ and Miquel de la Tor, take pains to identify themselves, and, in a sense, to sign their work. Each author points out to his readers or listeners the authenticity of his biography. Uc does so more explicitly by revealing that he spoke to a living witness (Ebles de Ventadorn) and one of the poet's descendants (14). For his part, Miquel lends credibility to his account by carefully documenting his own professional status (he is, he tells us, an escrivan, “writer”) and by identifying Nîmes as the place where he composed his text (71).

Authorship of the remaining Provençal biographies can, by analogy to the examples cited, be attributed to other (though anonymous) troubadours and jongleurs. But there are, of course, other possible candidates. For instance, we know that scribes who transmitted manuscripts of troubadour songs certainly read the Provençal language and were thus also likely to write it. As they transcribed troubadour lyrics, copyists not only copied down but perhaps even invented some of the accompanying biographies.

The vidas sometimes appear in early manuscripts as rubrications (Manuscripts B [Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds Français 1592] and IK [Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds Français 854 and 12743]). They seem to have been devised as eye-catching prefaces for the poems. If so, we should speculate that scholars commissioned to compile anthologies of troubadour songs composed some of the vidas at the same time they were transcribing the verses. They needed little more, we know, than a mere clue to the troubadour's region of origin. With that and a poem or two to provide a few additional details, a scribe could easily have created a brief “life” to decorate his page of poetry.

The task of these thirteenth and fourteenth-century scribes differed little from that of contemporary commentators who collected and annotated classical Latin texts for use in schools. An interesting parallel exists, not coincidentally, between the Old Provençal vidas and other medieval commentaries and glosses prepared by clerics and scribes. Specifically because of their function as prefaces or introductions, the vidas resemble the Latin vitae poetae, part of the accessus ad auctores, introductions to twelfth and thirteenth-century glosses on Greek and Latin writers. The Latin vitae, like the Provençal vidas, draw supposed historical “facts” about the authors' lives from their writings: a corrupt line in an eclogue by Theodolus, for instance, led his medieval biographer and commentator to claim that the Latin author had died young, before he could correct his work (Huygens, Accessus, pp. 26-27).

Other resemblances between the vitae poetae and the Old Provençal biographies are remarkable: both speak of the poet's origins, of his social status, training, and travels; both describe the literary text which they introduce (Huygens, Accessus, pp. 1-17; Quain; Hunt). The vitae poetae are similar in content to the Old Provençal “lives.” Like many of our vidas, the Latin texts speak of the poet's literary skills, of his origin and social position. The vita of the tenth-century poet Theodolus, for instance, first describes his education, then tells us about his travels and explains how his observations in various places affected his literary vision. The account, similar to numerous Old Provençal vidas, ends with a citation from Theodolus' poem.

Vidas and vitae also share analogous stylistic and thematic patterns: the auctores, like the troubadours in the vidas, perform only a limited number of actions, all relevant to the act of literary creation (they travel, study, observe). In the vidas, poets fall in love in order to compose poems; in the accessus, writers invariably convert to Christianity as a prelude to expounding their thoughts and experiences (Egan, “Commentary”).

The similarities between vidas and vitae should not surprise us. Both works are, after all, literary biographies as well as prefaces, and it is probably significant that both vidas and vitae differ markedly from other biographical texts of the period. Saints' lives, for instance, dwell on the miraculous and exemplary aspects of their subject's existence, while biographies of political figures emphasize physical prowess and diplomatic skills (De Ghellinck, I, 62-64; Auerbach, pp. 156-168).

From this we can generalize that authors of vidas and accessus, both working primarily from poetic texts—though at different times and under different circumstances—composed remarkably similar “lives.” The vidas stand in the tradition of these earlier medieval biographies, though direct influence cannot be demonstrated. There is, however, an important difference between the vidas and the vitae poetae. The structural parallels found in the two genres must not obscure the facts that the accessus were composed to be read silently and that they never directly addressed listeners. The vidas, by contrast, indicate (at least in some cases) that they were to be spoken or read aloud. Once we consider the question of audience, the actual circumstances of composition may become clearer.

We are aware that troubadour poetry flourished in a musical form, and that often songs were performed before they were written down. The vidas appear to have a similar oral tradition behind them. The phrasing of the “lives,” for instance, is extraordinarily uneven and rough. Furthermore, unlikely syntactic constructions, and sentences and narrative units connected with et (and), si (indeed, yet), and que (that, whom) may well be the mark of improvisation before a live audience (Fernandez Pereiro; Ong, pp. 36-57; Schutz, “Where Were the Provençal vidas Written?” and “Were the vidas Recited?”). One can easily imagine, for instance, certain rambling passages being recited by a jongleur at court:

And because of his wit and his inventiveness in poetry he gained great honor, so that the Dalfin of Auvergne took him as his knight and clothed him and armed him for a long time and gave him land and an income

(80).

More obvious signs of oral performance also appear in the vidas. Though many texts end with a concluding statement such as “and here are written” (2, 32, 39, 71), some vidas announce the recitation of poems to follow: “as you will hear” (14). Occasionally in the course of his account, the biographer reminds his listeners of what they have heard: “as I have said” (15), or “as I have told you” (84). (For similar elements in the Old Provençal razos, see Egan, “The Old Provençal vidas,” pp. 120-139.) In these cases we must assume that reading aloud or recitation of the troubadour verses followed what was an oral account of the troubadour's life. That account may have been originally composed “live,” at the time of performance or written down ahead of time to be read aloud.

The earliest written vidas may have been embellished during performances. With the text of a troubadour biography before him, the jongleur could have provided further details extemporaneously, and from time to time, as he read, addressed his listeners directly. For example, when the jongleur announced to his audience that he would sing (“as you will hear”), he was inadvertently adding an oral aspect to the vida which he had before him in writing. In later written versions, the vida texts came to incorporate these various spoken elements.

In fact, some vidas actually preserve clues of combined written and oral origins. Bernart de Ventadorn's biography, for example, finishes by announcing that poems are about to be sung: “he composed these songs which you will hear … which are written below” (14A). The simultaneous reference to hearing and writing could perhaps signify that the performer was reading before a live audience. To help his memory he carried—as did other performers at the time—written versions of troubadour poems. But he may also have had abbreviated vida texts or biographical annotations that would have served to introduce his performance of troubadour lyrics (Chaytor, Script to Print, pp. 11-13; Schutz, “Were the vidas Recited?”; see also vidas 1, 2, 3, 14, 17, 23, 29, 39, 41, 60, 62, 68, 75, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86A, 86B).

Nonetheless, the question remains as to how the biographies became the written texts they are. It is possible that jongleurs devised the vidas orally during performances and eventually wrote them down in their working manuscripts. It is also possible that the biographies existed in brief written sketches and were embellished afterwards, first in the course of oral performances and later by the copyists of more costly songbook collections. A more detailed look at the historical context of the vidas may illuminate their earliest stages and the subsequent evolution of the texts as we have them today.

SURVIVAL AND PERSPECTIVE

The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the Inquisition that followed had important effects on the performance of troubadour poetry. First, the disruption of many Provençal courts drastically limited the patronage of the nobles, and composers and performers were forced to find new sponsors in neighboring Italy and Spain (Sumption, pp. 244-252; Anglade, Troubadours, pp. 172-195, 278-281; Camproux, pp. 60 ff.). Furthermore, in the wake of growing religious intolerance and the strictures instituted by the Dominicans newly arrived in Provence, secular poetry declined. The verse of thirteenth-century troubadours took on an increasingly moralistic tone, became didactic and religious in theme (see recently, Topsfield, Troubadours, pp. 241-252, 260).

Now in foreign courts the new patrons looked back admiringly to the more refined and vigorous songs of the twelfth-century poets, and the traveling jongleurs could offer their listeners the poems of a bygone age. Although the Old Provençal language was certainly understood by Spanish and Italian courtly audiences (Alvar, pp. 23 ff.), the names and places mentioned in troubadour poems and even their authors were, in all likelihood, unfamiliar. Thus younger troubadours and jongleurs may have devised the vidas to introduce, in live performance, these little-known songs from as long as one hundred years before and from a culture which no longer existed. Whether the vidas were first composed extemporaneously or prepared in advance to be read aloud can only be guessed. Some combination of the two is not unlikely.

The authors of these lively texts made the words and deeds of past poets understandable: they explained how the older troubadours searched for patronage, fell in love, and composed songs. The authors recounted the “lives” in Provençal, a language understood although no longer spoken by courtly Spanish, Italian, and French audiences. We might imagine that as the performer shifted from preface to poem, as he modulated his own voice to give life to another's words and melody, the greatness of the twelfth-century tradition lent dignity to the thirteenth-century man. The vida demonstrated its author's close link with the past.

The next most probable stage in the composition of vidas took place not in the court but rather in the libraries and scriptoria. Initially, the survival of troubadour poetry was assured by its continued performance in exile. However, by the mid-thirteenth century, devotees of secular poetry had begun to compile written collections of Old Provençal texts, probably including the introductory “lives” (see Marshall, p. lxxxii). Thus the vidas, together with lyrics, were set down as testimonies to a fading oral tradition. Thereafter, scholarship would promote another stage: once preserved in a static form, vidas became divorced from the poems they had formerly introduced. Now considered narratives in their own right, by the fourteenth century vidas were grouped together separately in the chansonnier collections.

Still later, following a number of transcriptions, the plots of many “lives” grew more complex. As scribes (or even other troubadours) continued to copy the texts of the vidas, dialogue was added to the stories and characters were further developed. The two versions of Guillem de Cabestaing's “life” provide a good example: the shorter thirteenth-century text (53A) is concise and direct, while the fourteenth-century version (53B) not only adds dialogue between the jealous husband and his unfaithful wife but also contains an elaborate epilogue describing the king's glorification of the lovers (see also 86A and 86B).

It is also quite likely that the same scribes and troubadours could have invented some new biographies as they copied down the lyrics; using information circulating in the courts, drawing on the poems and even their own imaginations, they might put together short “lives” to preface their selection of poetry, consciously or unconsciously following the model of previous authors of vidas. The corpus grew larger as it became a distinct genre; and it is as a genre that we may read and study the vidas today.

If the foregoing reconstruction is warranted, we must assume that the vidas passed through both oral and written stages. Because of that evolution from recited preface to literary biography, we can better appreciate the importance of the vidas in the development of the narrative tradition of the Middle Ages. As introductions to live performances of troubadour songs and as “pre-texts” to written poems, the Old Provençal “lives” represent a vital link between learned medieval commentaries in Latin and secular storytelling in the vernacular.

The vidas stand at the crossroads of various traditions. On the one hand, like medieval glosses, they look back to earlier works of “classic” poets and demonstrate—for the first time in the vernacular—the various assumptions held by medieval audiences about Provençal verse. On the other hand, as independent narratives, the vidas anticipate new and important literary forms: not only Dante's Vita Nuova, in which the poet offers prose explanations of his own verse, but also, perhaps more significantly, the novelle of the Italian Renaissance (see Dardano, pp. 1-45, 148-150; Neuschäfer; Egan, “‘Razo’ and ‘Novella’”).

The legacy of the vidas did not end with the Italian Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, Italian commentators turned to the Provençal “lives” in the course of their scholarship on Petrarch and Dante. During the same era, Jean de Nostre Dame (brother of the famous astrologer) published a French collection of troubadour biographies loosely based on the Provençal originals. A literary history of the troubadours—including their lives—was produced by the Abbé Millot some two hundred years later, an effort which apparently drew upon the earlier research of J. B. Lacurne de Sainte Palaye (see Gossman, Medievalism, pp. 163 ff.). By the nineteenth century, serious editions of the texts were being attempted by German and French philologists.

Nonetheless, the vidas remained little known within the tradition of European letters until the lifetime of Ezra Pound. Pound, an avid student and translator of Old Provençal, was obviously and willingly inspired by the troubadour's lives (see Wilhelm, Later Cantos, pp. 35-45). Echoes and even quotations of the vidas pervade his work, with the result that an increasing number of modern readers have become familiar with the texts. A few of the Personae treat troubadours, Pound combining details from the Provençal biographies with his own interpretations of their verses. In “Marvoil,” the reader finds passages from Arnaut de Marueill's “life” (11) and in “Near Périgord” appears the tradition, found in the vida, of Bertran de Born's love of strife (17; see also Personae, pp. 22-24, 151-157; McDougal, pp. 45-51, 141-144).

Many of the Cantos show the similar, if indirect, influence of Old Provençal texts. Canto 4 recounts Peire Vidal's adventures disguised as a wolf (see the Razo in Boutière-Schutz, pp. 368-374) and recalls Guillem de Cabestaing's mistress jumping off a balcony as she avoids the blow of her jealous husband's sword (53). In Canto 5 Pound evokes the “lives” of three troubadours: Gausbert de Poicibot (39), Bernart de Ventadorn (14), and Peire de Maensac (73), while Cantos 6 and 29 chronicle the amorous affairs of Bernart de Ventadorn and Sordello, also told in Vidas 14 and 94.

Finally, and not surprisingly, Pound's interpretive essay, “Troubadours—Their Sorts and Conditions,” also draws attention to the vidas. His exhortations in this text may inspire us all:

If a man be so crotchety as to wish emotional, as well as intellectual, acquaintance with an age so out of fashion as the twelfth century, he may try in several ways to attain it. He may read the songs themselves from the old books—from the illuminated vellum—and he will learn what the troubadours meant to the folk of the century after their own. … Or [he] may walk the hill roads and river roads from Limoges and Charente to Dordogne and Narbonne … and learn … why such a man made war on such and such castles. Or he may learn the outlines of these events from the … ‘lives of the troubadours’”

(Literary Essays, pp. 95-96).

Works Cited

I. Major Texts and Critical Editions

Appel, Carl. Bernart von Ventadorn. Halle: 1915.

———. Der Trobador Cadenet. Halle: 1920.

Avalle, D'Arco S. Peire Vidal: Poesie. Milan-Naples: 1960.

Boutière, Jean. “Peire Bremon Lo Tort.” Romania, 54 (1928), 427-452.

———. “Les poésies du troubadour Albertet.” Studi Medievali, 10 (1937), 1-129.

———. “Le troubadour Guillem de Balaun.” Annales du Midi, 48 (1936), 225-251.

———, and A. H. Schutz. Biographies des Troubadours. 1st ed. Toulouse: 1950; 2nd ed. Paris: 1964; rpt. New York: 1972 (based on 1950 ed.).

Chaytor, H. J. Les Chansons de Perdigon. Paris: 1926.

———. Savaric de Mauléon, Baron and Troubadour. Cambridge, Eng.: 1939.

Favati, Guido. Le Biografie trovadoriche: testi provenzali dei secoli XIII e XIV. Bologna: 1961.

Huygens, R. B. C. Accessus ad Auctores. Bernard d'Utrecht. Conrad d'Hirsau: Dialogus Super Auctores. Leiden: 1970.

Jeanroy, Alfred. Jongleurs et troubadours gascons des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris: 1923.

———. Les Poésies de Cercamon. Paris: 1922.

———, and J. J. Salverda de Grave. Poésies de Uc de Saint Circ. Toulouse: 1913.

Lavaud, René. Les Poésies d'Arnaut Daniel. Toulouse: 1910.

———. Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180-1278). Toulouse: 1957.

II. Critical and Related Works

Alvar, Carlos. La Poesía trovadoresca en España y Portugal. Barcelona: 1977.

Anglade, Joseph. Les Troubadours. Paris: 1908.

Auerbach, Erich. Literary Language and Its Public in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. New York: 1965.

Camproux, Charles. Histoire de la littérature occitane. Paris: 1953.

Cravayat, Paul. “Les origines du troubadour J. Rudel.” Romania, 74 (1950), 166-179.

Dardano, Maurizio. Lingua e tecnica narrativa nel Duecento. Rome: 1969.

Delahaye, Hippolyte. Les Légendes hagiographiques. Brussels: 1955.

Egan, Margarita. “The Old Provençal Vidas: A Textural Analysis.” Dissertation, Yale, 1976.

———. “‘Razo’ and ‘Novella’: A Case Study in Narrative Forms.” Medioevo Romanzo, 6 (1979), 302-314.

———. “Commentary, Vitae poetae and Vida: Latin and Old Provençal ‘Lives of Poets.’” Romance Philology, 37 (1983-84), 36-48.

Ghellinck, J. de. Littérature latine au Moyen Age. Hildesheim: 1969.

Gossman, Lionel. Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment. Baltimore: 1968.

Guida, Saverno. “Per la biografia di Gui de Cavaillon e di Bertran Folco d'Avignon.” Cultura Neolatina, 32 (1972), 189-210.

Hunt, R. W. “The Introductions to the ‘Artes’ in the Twelfth Century.” Studia Mediaevalia in honorem admodum reverendi patris Raymundi Josephi Martin. Bruges: 1948; 85-112.

Marshall, J. H. The ‘Razos de Trobar’ of Raimon Vidal. London: 1972.

McDougal, S. Y. Ezra Pound and the Troubadour Tradition. Princeton: 1972.

Neuschäfer, H. J. “Die Herzmäre in der altprovenzalischen vida und in der Novelle Boccaccios.” Poetica, 2 (1968), 38-47.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word. London: 1982.

Panvini, Bruno. Le Biografie provenzali: valore e attendibilità. Florence: 1952.

Pound, Ezra. Cantos. New York: 1972.

———. Literary Essays, ed. T. S. Eliot. London: 1954; rpt. New York: 1972.

———. Personae. New York: 1971.

Quain, E. A. “The Medieval accessus ad auctores.” Traditio, 3 (1945), 215-264.

Schutz, A. H. “A Preliminary Study of trobar e entendre, an Expression in Mediaeval Aesthetics.” Romanic Review, 23 (1932), 129-132.

———. “Were the vidas and razos Recited?” Studies in Philology, 36 (1939), 565-570.

Stronski, Stanislaw. “Recherches historiques sur quelques protecteurs des troubadours.” Annales du Midi, 18 (1906), 473 ff.; 19 (1907), 40 ff.

———. La Poésie et la réalité aux temps des troubadours. Oxford: 1943.

———. Le Troubadour Folquet de Marseille. Krakow: 1910.

Sumption, John. The Albigensian Crusade. London: 1978.

Topsfield, L. T. Troubadours and Love. Cambridge, Eng.: 1973.

Wakefield, W. L. Heresy, Crusade, and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250. Berkeley: 1974.

Wilhelm, J. J. The Cruelest Month: Spring, Nature and Love in Classical and Medieval Lyrics. New Haven: 1965.

———. Seven Troubadours: The Creators of Modern Verse. University Park, Pa.: 1970.

———. The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: 1977.

Zumthor, Paul. Essai de poétique médiévale. Paris: 1972.