Scribes and Singers: Latin Models of Authority and the Compilation of Troubadour Songbooks by Christopher J. Davis A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Peggy S. McCracken, Chair Professor Alison Cornish Professor Yopie Prins Professor Elizabeth L. Sears Associate Professor Catherine Brown Dedication For my parents, William Davis and Christina Tree ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my chair, Peggy McCracken, for her patience, encouragement and support throughout this process. She has been, from start to finish, the ideal dissertation advisor. I also wish to thank Catherine Brown for coaching (both work and life) and for being a model of academic curiosity. I owe a debt of gratitude to the other members of my committee, Yopie Prins, Alison Cornish and Betsy Sears, for their generous feedback and support at every stage of this project. I would also like to thank the many friends who have read and commented on this dissertation, particularly Alan Itkin, Mira Seo, Ari Friedlander, Stephanie Elsky, Carrie Wood and Daniel Hershenzon. I am particularly grateful to Julen Etxabe and Monica Lopez for years of good conversation, and to my fellow Michigan medievalists, Maria Canal, Tom Maranda and Julie Human for their many observations. I am grateful to Emily Zinnemann for criticism of all kinds. I would also like to thank the fellows of the Michigan Humanities Institute for their contributions and comments. Finally, I wish to thank my family for their love and support, particularly my parents, William and Christina, and also Liam, Timothy, Yuko, Aki and Taiga, who was born in the same year as this dissertation. iii Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapters 1. Vida, Razo, Accessus: Latin Commentary and the Vernacular Auctor 22 2. Silent Songbooks: Musical Notation and Blank Spaces in Manuscript R 79 3. The Best Example: Occitan Grammars and the Transcription of Troubadour Songs 132 Conclusion: Lo Vers Auctor 193 Works Cited 205 iv 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 v 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. vi Introduction i. Grammaticalizing the Vernacular Sometime around the year 1200, the Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Besalù composed a grammar of the Occitan language (which he refers to as Limousin) designed as an aid to composition for non-native speakers. In this groundbreaking treatise, he makes a series of claims about the status of Occitan as a lyric language, and also about the relationship of troubadour song to Latin grammatica: Per q’ieu vos dic qe totz hom qe vuella trobar ni entendre deu aver fort privada la parladura de Limousin. Et apres deu saber alqes de la natura de grammatica, si fort primamenz vol trobar ni entendre, car tota la parladura de Lemosyn se parla naturalmenz et per cas et per nombres et per genres et per temps et per personas et per motz, aisi com poretz auzir aissi sib en o escoutas. Therefore I tell you that everyone who wants to compose or understand songs has to be very intimate with the Limousin idiom. And he must also know 1 something of the nature of grammar [grammatica] if he wants to do those things well; for the entire Limousin tongue is spoken naturally and correctly with respect to case, number, gender, tense, person, and part of speech, as you will hear if you pay attention to me.1 Raimon Vidal’s description of the language of the troubadours as a grammatically stable idiom, structured by the paradigm of Latin grammar, stands in stark contrast to the representation of poetic language in the works of many twelfth-century troubadours, which are often characterized by anxiety about the stability of songs in oral circulation, as in this example by the early troubadour Jaufré Rudel: Bos es lo vers can no⋅i falhi E tot so que⋅i es, ben esta, E sel que de mi l’apenra Gart se no i⋅falha ni⋅l pessi, Qu[e] si l’auzo en Lemozi E Bertrans e⋅l coms el Tolza. The song is good, since I didn’t fail in it,/ And all there is in it goes well/ and the one who will learn it from me,/ let him beware lest he fail in it and break it 1 Text from J.H. Marshall, The Razos de Trobar of Raimon Vidal and Associated Texts (London: Oxford University Press, 1972) 2; translation from Marianne Shapiro, De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante’s Book of Exile (University of Nebraska Press, 1990) 113. 2 up,/ for thus may they hear it in the Limousin,/ both Bertran and the count in the Toulousain.2 Raimon’s approach to defining Occitan as an autonomous language, structured by abstract standards of correctness, reflects the emergence of a formal textual culture surrounding troubadour poetry, and the influence of Latin models of compilation and commentary on the transcription of songbooks. Despite obvious differences in context in medium of transmission, Raimon’s grammatical definition of Limousin echoes a theme common among earlier troubadours: namely, that the language of poetry is separate from other kinds of speech and that the act of defining the language of song—of establishing a langue d’auteur—is essential to mastering the art of trobar. Raimon’s conception of Occitan as a literary language is clearly influenced by the model of Latin, as is the Donatz Proensals, which was composed in Italy in the mid-thirteenth century, likely by the troubadour Uc de Saint Circ. Originally from southern France, Uc spent most of his career at courts in northern Italy, where he had more influence than any other single individual on defining the textual culture of troubadour song. He likely participated in the production of the earliest extant songbook D (Modena, Bibl. Naz. Estense, ∝. R. 4. 4), as well as the composition of many of the biographical commentaries that accompany songs in manuscripts. These vidas and razos were loosely modeled on similar genres of commentary found in Latin school texts, and the importance of Latin as a conceptual and methodological 2 Rupert Pickens, The Songs of Jaufré Rudel (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978) 236-237. 3 model is evident throughout Uc’s work. The Donatz Proensals is modeled on the Ars Minor of Donatus, and begins with an explicit comparison between Occitan and Latin: Las oit partz que om troba en gramatica troba om en vulgar provençhal, zo es: nome, pronome, verbe, adverbe, particip, conjunctios, prepositios et interjetios.3 The eight parts that are found in Latin [gramatica] are found in the Provençal vernacular, these are: noun, pronoun, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition and interjection. References to grammatica by both Uc and Raimon represent a commentary on the linguistic structure of Occitan, which also invites an extended comparison with Latin, through which the authoritative qualities of Latin are systematically applied to the language of trobar. For medieval readers, the auctoritas of Latin was linked to its status as a language of texts, both sacred and secular, and the treatment of troubadour songs in grammars and many songbooks shows a desire to represent the troubadours and their language as exemplary of a similar textual authority. This trend is evident in many of the distinctive aspects of chansonniers, from the emphasis on standardized orthography and noun-declension to the organization of collections according to 3 J. H. Marshall The Donatz Proensals of Uc Faidit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) 88; my translation. 4 abstract criteria, such as poetic style (trobar leu or trobar clus) and geographical provenance.