Trobar Cor(s): Erotics and Poetics in Flamenca Juliet Lucy Anne O’Brien Adviser: Sarah Kay 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 © Copyright by Juliet Lucy Anne O’Brien, 2006. All rights reserved. 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. Flamenca explores trobar in various searches for love, questioning sincerity and investigating true love. Trobar intertwines erotics and poetics. “Finding the true” extends trobar into epistemology and ethics. Subversion expands ideas of medieval creativity into derivative ingenuity; in a positive, critical, commentating sense, opening the text and enriching meaning in semantic destabilization. The “courtly love debate” is reopened in the context of a second, related idea and amorous ideal: amor coral, a love to do with the heart and parity. 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 of the three protagonists, in multiple, “choose your own adventure” reading. Each chapter follows a protagonist in their pursuit of love, enacting a “lyric narrative,” and trying to escape lyric entrapment: amorous imprisonment, compositional problems, and intertextual reference to other protagonists and poets. This trobar clus – “closed finding” – is crossed with amor cortesa, to produce new ideas of “closed love” and “courtly poetry,” and new understanding of trobar. Multiple narrative voices parallel multiple focalizations. Both multiplicities are necessary to good reading, which must afford them equivalent status and take all of them into account (parity) and balance them (mesura, akin to Aristotelian ethical measure) to make sense of the narrative and interpret it fairly. Flamenca experiments with the entwined ideas of authorship and authority, explores the role of the reader or audience in a work, and plays with distinctions between narrative roles. iii Contents Abstract iii Contents iv Acknowledgements v Introduction: Flamenca 1 The text and this dissertation’s reading 1 History of the text: manuscript and editions 7 Historical contexts: language, ideas, and literature 10 1. Contexts erotic and poetic: trobar amor clusa e cortesa 18 1.1 Erotics: from Ovid to the courtly love debate 23 1.2 Poetics: the canso, and clus/cortes as lyric imprisonment 52 1.3 Reading Flamenca as a canso of amor cortesa 80 2. The Canso de Guillem: release from trobar clus 94 2.1 Guillem as aman-trobador 96 2.2 Escape into fantasy 100 2.3 Breaking free into a place of one’s own 124 2.4 The subversive trobador 143 3. The Canso-tenso de Flamenca: alternative trobar 158 3.1 Flamenca comes to life and becomes a trobairitz 159 3.2 Dialogue in parity: tenso 184 3.3 Idealised amor coral 207 3.4 The rejection of delusional fantasy 228 4. The Roman d’Archimbaut: trobar and appropriation 237 4.1 Archimbaut perverts trobar 238 4.2 Narrative voices and other “arch-players” 250 4.3 Resignation to courtly rehabilitation and control 275 Conclusion: Beyond Flamenca – audience, ethics, and trobar 285 Bibliography 299 iv 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. v Dedicated to the memory of Karl D. Uitti vi 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, queer, and post-colonial writings. Aside from supporting this topical cultural- politics agenda, I would like, through this dissertation, to draw attention to Flamenca as a fine piece of work, playing a part in French literary history, and – most vitally – well worth reading. The joys of Flamenca may be glimpsed in one of the nicest plot summaries of Flamenca, provided by Jean-Charles Huchet at the start of his edition, the most recent one to date:1 1 Jean-Charles Huchet, Flamenca: Roman occitan du XIIIe siècle (Paris: U.G.E., 1988): 20-22. My translation. 1 What remains of the story opens with the examination of the offer for Flamenca’s hand, presented by an emissary on behalf of Archimbaut, lord of Bourbon. The request is granted by Flamenca and her parents. The nuptials are celebrated with magnificence at Nemours. The festivities last eight days, then Archimbaut returns to Bourbon to oversee his young wife’s welcome. Flamenca’s arrival in the town is the occasion for sumptuous feasts, at which the king of France demonstrates excessive courtesy. This awakens Archimbaut’s jealousy: and, when at a joust, he sees the king bearing a sleeve suspected of belonging to Flamenca. The new husband sinks into a morbid jealousy that leads him to neglect himself, renounce the worldly values of courtesy, and, finally, to cloister Flamenca in a tower, the better to keep watch on her and shelter her from the attentions of imaginary galants. The romance then lends itself to a near-clinical study of jealousy and an evocation of the recluse’s woes. Rumour of the latter reaches the ear of a young knight – Guillem de Nevers – endowed with every quality, but sheltered until then from the trials of love. Guillem decides to love Flamenca and becomes Love’s devotee. He goes incognito to Bourbon, arriving the Saturday after Easter, finds the best inn, and chooses a room from which he can perceive the tower concealing the sole object of his preoccupations henceforth. The next day, in church, he has the chance to glimpse Flamenca’s face; although the jealous husband keeps her in a nook sheltered from all gazes and desires. Guillem works out that it is possible to slip the beauty a word, under cover of the psalter, the moment when it is given to be kissed. He takes the place of the clerk Nicolas - sent to Paris to continue his studies – and has his hosts empty the inn of other guests so that he can have an underground tunnel dug secretly, linking his room to the baths where Flamenca is sometimes allowed to go. Over the course of several weeks from May to August, uttering one word every service, Guillem reveals his love to Flamenca, who agrees to reply to him and ends up sharing the same feelings. Feigning serious illness, the recluse obtains Archimbaut’s permission to take the waters whenever she wishes, and regularly visits Guillem’s room via the underground tunnel. This clandestine love lasts until the end of November. Flamenca then pronounces a kind of oath [of fidelity]that allows the jealous husband to recover his courtesy and announce that a tournament will be held the next Easter. Flamenca persuades Guillem to return to his lands and then come back for the tournament. Thanks to Archimbaut, who is frequenting tournaments again, news of Guillem’s exploits reaches Flamenca, as well as salutz [love-letter(s)] composed by this former clerk who has become a knight and troubadour again. The week after Easter, jousters gather in Bourbon, where Guillem, too, arrives. Invited by Archimbaut to choose some jewels in a room, the lovers are able to resume their pleasures again at their leisure. Guillem wins the Prize for the tournament’s first day, as well as Flamenca’s sleeve, with which he covers the inside of his shield. The story ends on the second day.