Scribes and Singers: Latin Models of Authority and the Compilation of Troubadour Songbooks.

Abstract

“Scribes and Singers: Latin Models of Authority and the Compilation of Troubadour Songbooks” offers a new reading of medieval troubadour poetry in its manuscript contexts to argue that the chansonniers, the medieval anthologies that preserve this poetry, stage formal comparisons with Latin textual culture. This dissertation re-conceptualizes the place of troubadour lyrics in medieval vernacular literature by reading manuscripts not as written scripts of oral performances, but as complex compilations of literary texts, which engage contemporary concerns about the vernacular as a language of literary authority. Each chapter studies a distinctive characteristic of the troubadour chansonnier-corpus and its effect on the reception of song-texts. Chapter One, “Vida, Razo, Accessus: Latin Commentary and the Vernacular Auctor,” explores the relationship between two genres of commentary, the Latin accessus ad auctores, and the troubadour vidas and razos. Focusing on accessus for Ovid and razos for Bertran de Born, I argue that Occitan commentaries appropriate Latin conventions and reading strategies to represent the troubadour as a vernacular auctor, exemplary of aesthetic and ethical values identified with fin’amor. Chapter Two, “Silent Songbooks: Musical Notation and Blank Spaces in Manuscript R,” examines the use of musical notation and the relationship between text and music in the verse-libre of Guiraut Riquier. I argue that troubadour melodies were copied not for oral performance, but to support an influential fiction of orality in the manuscripts. Chapter Three, “The Best Example: Occitan Grammars and the Transcription of Troubadour Songs” re-evaluates the importance of Occitan grammars to the development of troubadour textual culture. I argue that treatises by Raimon Vidal, Jofre de Foixà, and Uc Faidit established standards of correctness based on Latin models that guided the transcription of chansonniers. I focus on examples of hypercorrectness in manuscript A as evidence that scribes privileged grammatical unity over linguistic variation. The Conclusion compares attitudes towards language in the work of Guilhem IX and in Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia, charting an evolution from a concept of poetic authority based in individual composition and performance to an abstract model, derived from Latin, and from the authority of a textual canon.