Attribution, Authority, and Freedom
Master Ferrarino, an early fourteenth-century lawyer from Ferrara, boasts of consigning to oblivion the parts of songs that he does not select for inclusion in his anthology, confident that a song’s essential sentenças can be captured in only a few of its stanzas.1 A 226-item florilegium based on his collection makes up the section of chansonnier D known as Dc.2 His vida, preserved solely as a preface to this anthology, explains his procedure: “He made a selection from all the songs of the best troubadours in the world and from each canso or sirventes he drew one or two or three stanzas that carried the meaning of the song and had the most carefully chosen words” (“E fe[s] un estrat de tutas las canços des bos trobador[s] del mon; e de chadaunas canços o serventes tras .i. cobla o .ii. o .iii. aqelas qe portan la[s] sentenças de las cansos e o son tu[i]t li mot triat,”Biographies, CI, 581).3
Nancy Washer points out the double burden this formulation places on the excerpted stanzas, which both “replicate the meaning of and replace the complete songs.”4 In thus identifying the core meaning of a song, the anthologist puts himself, in Maria Luisa Meneghetti’s words, “in a position of antagonism vis-à-vis the poet,”5 effectively declaring much of the troubadour’s composition redundant. Such comments recall the qualification, in the Introduction, of quotation as an act of violence, whether in the form of aggression toward the original author, mutilation of his text, or defiance of the reader.6 Ferrarino has already performed this violence on behalf of users who may subsequently decide to quote the extracted passages. But at the same time, the fact that he has reduced songs to bite-sized morsels preempts the process of solicitation (to evoke Compagnon’s more seductive term) whereby only parts of texts appeal to us as quotable.7 If selection is the first step toward quotation, it is here, thanks to Ferrarino, a fait accompli. The coblas he elects to copy are already, in some degree, quoted by him and are offered up as inviting quotation by others.
In Dc the process of excerption is rendered palpable by the use of incipits as rubrics to introduce the selected stanzas (except in rare cases where the first stanza itself forms part of the excerpt): the incipits, written in red ink, underline the incompleteness of the following text and raise the specter of other lines and stanzas that the anthologist has chosen not to include. The same format of incipits plus selected stanzas is followed by the shorter florilegium in chansonnier F (170 items on folios 13r—62r of F, referred to as Fa), and in the more recently discovered fragment Cm (13 items, all by Raimon de Miraval and Arnaut de Maruelh, from what was clearly an anthology on at least the scale of Fa).8 The way all three anthologies CmDcFa make visible the labor of extraction confirms the readiness for quotation of the selections they propose.
Since their entries are organized troubadour by troubadour, with attributions to named poets (also in red) heading almost every entry, these anthologies are, moreover, collections of “authorities” that can be cited by name as well as quoted. The process of excerption interestingly reveals that an authority should not be identified with what an author actually wrote. Rather, it is what another person (the anthologist) deems worth preserving and acknowledging in that author. As happens likewise in citation, the notion of attribution here offers a useful alternative to that of “authorship.” Attribution implies less that a given opinion originated in the mind of an earlier author than that it can be ascribed to one; it involves a direction to, not a movement from, the author in question. If authorship implies that an author is to be credited with responsibility for what is written, attributing a quotation also ratifies what the person quoting already thinks by referring the opinion to someone else; the conservation of a recognizable name is valuable primarily as a means of underwriting ideas (sentenças, in the terminology of Ferrarino’s biography) to which one wishes to give currency. As I shall argue in the last section of this chapter, such a concept of authority is far more enabling than it is constraining, since it licenses the exploration of different concepts and affects under the flag of a well-known name and exposes the multiplicity—and hence the contingency—of the positions that a textual “I” may hold (see also Chapter II).
In what is probably the earliest surviving copy of a florilegium, item #167 on folios 47–49 of chansonnier H (third quarter of the thirteenth century), it is even clearer that the compiler has both culled extracts from songs and earmarked them as future quotations.9 The format of #167 is unique to this manuscript. It consists of twenty-six entries each comprising a prose rubric followed by one or more excerpted coblas (thirty-seven of them all told) grouped according to the lyric from which they were taken, and cut back to the coblas’ opening line (though for items <3> and <25> the entire strophe is provided).10 Typically the prose rubrics issue directives as to what contexts the abridged stanza or stanzas are appropriate for, and who their author is. Since the copyist used black ink only for the actual troubadour verses, which are less extensive than the rubrics, the folios containing #167 are more red than black; their hectic appearance matches their somewhat hectoring manner. Modern critics usually call these prose rubrics razos, but they are the diametrical opposite of the biographies referred to by that term. Whereas biographical razos anchor the composition of individual songs in the specifics of their authors’ experiences, the H razos prescribe the broad applicability of the extracted stanzas to a range of contexts. The coblas cease being expressions of a particular individual’s feelings and become instead generic reflections or commonplaces. While this gesture frees them up for general use, the fact that they are abbreviated to just their incipits is conversely restrictive. The reader of #167 is challenged to summon up the knowledge necessary to supply the omitted lines with no more helpful prompt than a curt “etc.”11 Users are put in the strange position of being informed what purpose each stanza might serve while being denied access to most of its text. Their situation is thus very different from that of readers of florilegia like Dc, who are assured that there is no need for them to know any more of the songs than the anthologist has selected for them. More explicitly than those anthologies, however, the arrangement of H attributes to known troubadours opinions that have been formulated by its compiler; even more than them it may provoke its users to respond to and experiment with its materials.
Appendix 2 documents the contents of the CmDcFaH florilegia. In addition, it includes those of the anthologies in chansonniers G and J, which observe different principles again.12 (These manuscripts were chosen because of their connection with H, signaled by Maria Careri,13 and because they transmit the Novas del papagai discussed in Chapter 6.) Instead of reproducing what are clearly excerpts from multi-stanza works attributed to named troubadours, they contain single coblas that are either isolated stanzas or extracts from longer songs—though without indicating which. The GJ anthologists are similarly noncommittal about attribution: many of the coblas they single out are anonymous, but even those that are by known troubadours are copied anonymously. In these two florilegia the practice of quotation has effectively merged with copying tout court, a convergence commented on in Chapter 3. Even if scholarship reveals that some of the single stanzas in GJ are identical to excerpted ones in CmDcFa, G and J present them as copies of self-contained compositions (coblas esparsas), or as copies that accidentally became truncated in transmission: nothing marks the intention to select, or the specter of a larger whole of which the extracted stanzas would form a part. As instances of authority these stanzas are entirely free-floating and available, with neither constraints nor recommendations as to their potential use.
It is difficult to determine when these anthologies came into existence. Over the course of the thirteenth century they evidently circulated in considerable numbers since interconnected compilations are found in at least Cm-DcFaGHJNPQT. The Italian origin of all of these manuscripts except J strongly implies that the practice of compiling florilegia began in Italy. Probably, as Meneghetti proposes, there were originally two anthologies: a courtly one best preserved in Dc and a more scurrilous one best represented in GQ.14 As a result, Dc and its relatives read like an abridgment of one of the big Italian chansonniers (such as ABDIK), while the GQ type of florilegium seems more like a raucous supplement to such a codex. The ordering of columns in Appendix 2 from Dc on the left to G on the right reveals the variations and permutations between these two poles. They are already fused in H #167, which shows that the two underlying types of anthology were thoroughly interwoven well before the end of the thirteenth century, and certainly long before Ferrarino da Ferrara’s biographer attempted to give him credit for having invented the anthology form. In the next section of this chapter I give reasons for thinking that collections of coblas triadas date back as early as the pioneering forms of quotation discussed in Chapters 1–3.
As Meneghetti notes, anthologized stanzas become increasingly freestanding over time, the pattern of J and G resurfacing in N, T, and especially P.15 But the older and seemingly better defined florilegia in DcFa already contain a slippery mix that includes a few unattributed freestanding coblas, abridged copies, inset entire songs, and even what may be entire songbooks of lyrics by less well-known troubadours. Meneghetti thinks that, paradoxically, one of Ferrarino’s contributions to the florilegium he reworked may have been to increase the number of whole songs.16 Even in the ruthlessly abbreviating H an exchange of coblas esparsas between the Count of Rodez and Uc de Saint Circ (185.3 and 457.33) has crept in among the otherwise clearly flagged coblas triadas, though presumably without forming part of the anthology.
Consequently, of all the practices considered in these first four chapters, those of the florilegia are the hardest to generalize about, especially with regard to how they relate part to whole and quotation to other forms of iteration. Meneghetti may, however, be right to say that there is little value in attempting to categorize anthologized coblas in terms of their putative origins, and that instead of asking whether they are accidentally truncated, deliberately excerpted, or self-contained, we should concentrate on their common availability as handy gobbets of troubadour lore.17 That the terms esparsas and triadas were not opposed for medieval readers is indicated by a rubric in R, which introduces a section with the words “Aiso so coblas triadas esparsas de[n] B[er]tr[n] carbonel de marselha” (112v; Here are selected isolated stanzas of Bertran Carbonel of Marselha). Whereas copies of whole songs are instances of curatorship that monumentalize the troubadours, copies of isolated or selected stanzas are pragmatically oriented. They are ready for use by those who quote, even if they are not all equally designated as being already quotations. I would go further and suggest that anthologies solicit quotation because they preselect authorities and enable maximal flexibility as to their use.
The next section of this chapter surveys the overlap between anthologization and quotation. In the final section, I examine two songs that are both anthologized and quoted, showing the freedom to experiment with different conceptual or affective stances to which their reduction to snippets of authority gave rise.
Florilegia do more than signal quotability. Comparing Appendices 1 and 2 shows that the contents of anthologies coincide with actual quotations. Before the extent of this overlap can be assessed, however, two provisos need to be borne in mind.
First, since Appendix 2 includes only some of the existing anthologies, the extent of the shared material between anthologized stanzas and passages quoted is probably greater than shown here. Second, how one compares Appendix 1 with Appendix 2 depends on how the information provided by Appendix 2 is read. I chose the stanza as the basic recording unit throughout Appendix 2 for several reasons: to facilitate comparison with Appendix 1, given that most of the correspondences between it and Appendix 2 occur at or below the level of the stanza; because the stanza is the basic unit of the JG florilegia and also, for the most part, of H; and because, while the same songs sometimes occur in CmDcFa, they are not usually represented by the same stanzas. Thus, for example, the distribution over four rows in Appendix 2 of Folquet de Marselha’s “Per Dieu, Amors, ben sabetz veramen” (155.16) makes it apparent that (material from) stanza I appears in DcFa and the Breviari; that (material from) stanza II is repeated in DcFaH plus So fo and the Breviari; that stanza III occurs in FaH; and that stanza V is excerpted only in Dc. But it takes a closer look to see that in Dc, stanzas I, II, III, and V all form part of a single anthology item, #29, and that in Fa, the incipit and stanzas II–III similarly constitute item #53. This is because, as already explained, the rubrics in CmDcFa itemize their contents with reference to an entire song, whether they record one stanza from it or many. Consequently, the CmDcFa columns in Appendix 2 risk giving the impression that these manuscripts contain many more items than is indicated by the florilegia themselves. For instance, Guilhem Augier Novella’s “Per vos, bella dolz amia” (205.4a), all five stanzas of which are copied in Fa but none of which is anthologized or quoted elsewhere to my knowledge, is presented in Appendix 2 as five potential stanzalength sources of quotation, as much as it is as the single anthology item Fa #137. Calculating the contents of Appendix 2 gives different results according to what one counts: the stanza-by-stanza ordinatio modeled by GJ produces a total of around 1,200 stanzas, the song-by-song disposition typified by CmDcFaH results in a count of 365 songs, and the author-based arrangement that H more or less shares with CmDcFa yields seventy-four troubadours plus thirty-two anonymous pieces. Each of these outcomes compares differently with its counter part in Appendix 1. Following a stanza count, Appendix 2 contains about twice as many units up to a cobla in length as Appendix 1. Starting from the numbers of songs or of troubadours, however, reverses this result, making Appendix 1 (with about 383 known songs, including anonymous ones, and ninety-four named poets) the richer of the two.
These provisos about the way Appendix 2 is compiled mean that, heuristically, it makes more sense to start with the quotations recorded in Appendix 1 and see how many of them also appear in the anthologies I have analyzed, than to begin from Appendix 2. Essentially, that means counting the number of entries in Appendix 1, and the number of positive correspondences between those entries and those in Appendix 2 as indicated in the last column of Appendix 1, and comparing the results. Only identifiable quotations (i.e., those from known troubadours or from anonymous songs attested elsewhere) are worth including in this comparison, since unidentified ones by definition have no PC number and no known equivalent in any other source.
The calculation reveals a striking degree of correspondence. Of the 589 rows in Appendix 1 that represent identifiable quotations, 188, or 32 percent, correspond with passages excerpted in the florilegia documented in Appendix 2. The overlap is especially marked in the cases of Arnaut de Maruelh, Cadenet, Folquet de Marselha, Gui d’Ussel, Peirol, Pons Fabre d’Uzes, Raimon de Miraval, Uc Brunenc,18 and the anonymous songs. For many other troubadours a high proportion of the passages quoted are also anthologized: Aimeric de Peguilhan, Guillem de Montanhagol, Peire Rogier, Perdigon, Pons de Capdoill, and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. Certain well-known ones, notably Bernart de Ventadorn, Gaucelm Faidit, Giraut de Bornelh, and Peire Vidal, feature extensively in both appendices, yet with less overlap in the actual passages figuring from one to the other. The two appendices also coincide in many of their omissions. The early troubadours from Guilhem de Peitieu to not only Jaufre Rudel but also Peire d’Alvernha19 are almost completely absent from both, as are the trobairitz.20 Italian and Catalan troubadours make little appearance in either appendix, though they are more common as anthology pieces than as regular quotations—witness, for instance, the entries in Appendix 2 for Lanfranc Cigala and Sordello.21 Dialogue pieces are also more commonly anthologized than quoted, but they remain relatively underrepresented in both appendices. There is, then, an overall high level of convergence between the passages quoted and those anthologized.
Turning now to the major contexts in which quotations are found, one might expect the vidas and razos to overlap the most with the anthologies. These biographical texts are found in chansonniers such as ABDIK, which, like the florilegia, are Italian and are organized troubadour by troubadour with better-known poets higher up the order, as happens in CmDcFa and to some extent in the anthology in H. However, of the 130 quotations in the biographies, only 33 (about 25 percent) correspond with the coblas inventoried in Appendix 2.
Consequently, if surprisingly, there is more convergence between the contents of florilegia and the quotations found in non-Italian texts. Maria Careri and Elizabeth Poe have demonstrated the overlap between the excerpted stanzas in H and the passages quoted in the later Breviari d’amor, which, like the florilegia, favors the stanza as its unit of quotation.22 The Breviari also imitates the anthologist’s sense of extracting the essential argument from a song, though Matfre Ermengau’s interpretations go well beyond the courtly or satirical limits of florilegia, highlighting instead the songs’ potential for theological enlightenment (see below and Chapter 8). Of some 264 quotations from troubadour lyrics in the Breviari, 92 or 35 percent) are the same as, or overlap with, anthologized stanzas, and Matfre also quotes from nine songs that are represented in florilegia though his choice does not fall on the same stanzas as those that are anthologized.
Even more surprising is the high proportion of overlap between quotations and anthologized stanzas in the novas and grammars that originate in Catalonia and date from the turn of the twelfth to the thirteenth century onward. The very earliest treatise, the Razos de trobar, possibly composed before 1200, contains twenty-nine quotations, twelve (41 percent) of which overlap with excerpted stanzas. Its author, the Catalan Raimon Vidal, was also the first to deploy, as a sign of scholarly mastery, the technique also found in CmDcFa of quoting a song’s incipit and then a selection of its content (see Chapter 1). And of the forty-seven identified passages quoted in Abril issia and So fo e.l tems, twenty-four (51 percent) overlap with material in excerpted stanzas, while a further seven come from songs that are mined by compilers of florilegia, even if different stanzas appear in the florilegia from in the novas. Like the Breviari, the novas are more inclined to favor the stanza as a unit of quotation, and this is another respect in which they resemble anthologies, especially those in CmDcFaH since like them the novas (and the grammars too) regularly include attributions (though unlike grammars, the novas do not quote incipits). Moreover the H florilegium, while sharing very few actual passages with the novas, inserts its excerpts within generic situations involving men and women, a trait that gives it common ground with the short story. Indeed, some of the H extracts are linked together in a narrative arc in a way that seemingly overrides its poet-by-poet disposition; for example, <16>–<18> form a sequence of adventures and misadventures. At one stage of working on this book I amused myself by inserting all the H prose razos in order into a novas-like tale in which a noble patron steers unsteadily between two ladies, helped and occasionally hindered by his joglar. The fact that this was quite easy to achieve shows that H #167 could conceivably be material for, or the remnants of, a short story.
The relatively high proportion of shared material between Italian florilegia and Occitan and Catalan texts dating back to the early thirteenth century is remarkable. It cannot simply be explained by the prevalence, from an early date, of copies of certain songs, given that the same passages of those songs are both quoted and anthologized. Could it be that the Italian compilers of florilegia were influenced by the Catalano-Occitan vogue for quotation, more than they were by quotations in the biographical genres? Or should we rather conclude that collections of excerpted stanzas arose much earlier than previously appreciated and circulated more widely than in Italy, even though that is where the surviving copies originated? Whatever the answers to these questions, it is clear that collections of excerpted stanzas belong together with the pioneering forms of quotation outlined in this first part of my book, despite the relative lateness of their manuscript attestation.
In the final section of this chapter I examine excerpts from two songs that, between them, are anthologized in CmDcFa, H, and J, as well as parodied in G, and quoted in every pre-1300 Occitan genre that includes quotation: grammars, novas, biographies, the Breviari, and the lyric. These examples thus provide a link between the pioneering modes of quotation explored in Chapters 1, 2, and 3, and their elaboration considered in Chapters 7 and 8. The variation in the treatment of the excerpts is striking and suggests that the solicitation on the part of florilegia to quote their authorities did not restrict freedom so much as define it.
The quotation of the incipit to “La franca captenensa” (30.15) in IK’s vida of Arnaut de Maruelh was discussed in Chapter 3. Arnaut, says the biographer, composed the song for a countess to whom he could not otherwise admit his love; her capacity to discern its meaning makes her a surrogate for the reader of the chansonnier who has not yet reached the copy of the song’s text. In addition to the incipit, the vida may allude to the second stanza of the song in which Arnaut fears he may be tempted to forsar (coerce) his lady, euphemizing Arnaut’s unsavory thoughts of assault into an unimpeachable urge to sing to her of his love.
I noted in my discussion of the vida that this second stanza is not alluded to or anthologized elsewhere. Like the vida, the florilegia in Dc and Cm both reproduce the song’s incipit, but in order to situate their inclusion of stanzas IV and V. The opening line of stanza IV is quoted in H following a brief prose razo. The Breviari d’amor also quotes this same stanza IV; the line introducing the quotation ends with the rhyme word captenensa (30836) in a reminiscence of CmDc’s practice of prefacing quotation of this stanza with the incipit. Of greatest interest to medieval readers, clearly, was this fourth stanza, which in Johnston’s edition reads:
Dompna, per gran temensa,
tant vos am e.us teing car,
no.us aus estiers pregar.
mas plus fai ad honrar
us paubres avinens
que sap honor grazir
e.ls bes d’amor celar,
c’us rics desonoissens,
cui par que totas gens
lo deian obezir.
(Song 3, 31–40)
Lady, I dare not implore you otherwise than in great fear, so much do I love and cherish you. But a poor, agreeable man who knows how to appreciate the honor done to him and conceal the benefits of love is to be honored more than an undiscerning magnate who imagines it is everyone’s duty to obey him.
Stanza V expresses the hope that success in love will reward fortune and wit (“astres et sens,” 49) more than it does wealth.
In both Dc and Cm the anthology item consisting of the incipit and two stanzas is placed among other extracts from the same troubadour and conforms to the image they compile of Arnaut as a courtly supplicant. Whereas in the vida the incipit purports to reference the original context of the song, in these anthologies it acts as a title and gestures toward an absent, complete copy. Neither Dc nor Cm furnishes it with any commentary. By contrast, the contexts in which stanza IV is inserted in the florilegium in H and in Matfre Ermengau’s Breviari d’amor use it to essay utterly divergent meanings.
H prefaces the stanza’s opening line with this razo:23
Aqesta si.s fan a mandar a dompna c’om no aussa pregar d’amor. Per q’ella dei soffrir los precs e entendre la dolor e.l pensamen e.l desir coral de l’amic. E con a lei no notz et el prec si refrain la dolor e mostra qe plus deu hom far donar ad un paubre auinen qe ad un ric maluatz. Qe.l maluatz desconoissens cre c’om li deia far honor per sa ricor.
Arnautz de Miroill
[D]ompna per gran temenza etc. (H #167<21>)
This one is made to send to a lady whom one dares not beg for her love, because she ought to permit the prayers and heed the pain and sorrow and heartfelt desire of the lover. And how it does her no harm and how, in expressing his prayer, his pain is lessened; and it shows how one should cause more to be given to a poor, pleasing man than to an evil rich one. For the ignorant rich man believes he should be honored for his wealth.
Arnaut de Maruelh
Lady with great fear etc.
Such play on disclosing and withholding is typical of H and resembles the vida more than it does CmDc. The absence of text following the opening line of the stanza provides an opportunity for its meaning to be determined afresh, and the intimidating use of “etc.” holds readers accountable for doing so; but at the same time the compiler preempts the absent stanza, paraphrasing it and thereby introducing significant changes of emphasis. Arnaut’s text stresses the need for a poor man to be agreeable, grateful, and discreet if he is to win honor from his lady. The H razo, however, sidesteps any such demands on the lover to concentrate exclusively on what is required of the lady: she must hear the lover out and be answerable for his pain, obligations that are not voiced in the song. While in the vida interpretation is vested in the song’s original recipient who responds to it with grace, in H it is potentially transferrable to a host of new antifeminist contexts.24 In the vida, readers are assured that the lady understands the poem when they have only its first line and the barest indications of her thoughts, but here they seemingly benefit from the anthologist’s command of its import. Readers of the vida are unlikely to find their memories in overt conflict with the countess’s, or at least they are not provoked to conflict to the same extent as readers of H who, if they are capable of recalling Arnaut’s text, may well notice a lack of fit between the compiler’s paraphrase and the stanza in question. The contingent, hypothetical nature of the subject supposed to know is thus particularly exposed in H. And yet the H razo coincides uncannily with the vida in that both fantasize a lady’s capitulation to her lover’s desire—even though the knowledge imputed to the subject (and to women) is different in the two cases.
The same stanza of “La franca captenensa,” which in H tasks women with responding to their lovers, promotes in Matfre’s advice to ladies an exchange of virtuous love that is uncorrupted by worldly concerns (Breviari #135, 30837–46).25 In the lines preceding the quoted stanza, but before announcing it as such, Matfre rehearses its key vocabulary. He warns that lovers can be foolish and haughty on account of their rank (riqueza, 30819), which makes them undiscerning (desconoichen, 30820) toward women, incapable of appreciating the favor (grazir lo be, 30824) they receive from them, or of being discreet (celar, 30825). But ladies should love a man who is truly appreciative and also timid (temeros, 30828), even if he lacks all wealth (ricor, 30832). Having presented these views as if they were his own, Matfre proceeds to name Arnaut de Maruelh and repeat his words verbatim. Whereas the H compiler warned against the propensity for abuse in love, Matfre, without changing anything in Arnaut’s text, ultimately counsels that through humble, reciprocal love the soul will find its true identity. Both H and Matfre defer announcement of the troubadour’s name until after they have given their own version of the stanza’s contents, but Matfre does not even announce the fact that he is quoting until after this summary, thereby giving the impression that the troubadour agrees with him, rather than the other way round. Thus where H both compiles and preempts the troubadour, Matfre presents himself as his spokesman. The logic of attribution is essential to the freedom each enjoys to ascribe his own convictions to Arnaut de Maruelh, thereby constituting him as an “authority” and enjoying the return of that authority upon themselves.
Similar slippages are observable in ways in which songs of Folquet de Marselha are both extensively anthologized and quoted; I shall focus here on “Amors, merce: non mueira tan soven” (155.1), discussed in more detail by Nancy Washer.26 This song is quoted by incipit in DcFa and by Jofre de Foixà in his song “Be m’a lonc temps menat a guiza d’aura” (304.1). In Dc, the incipit prefaces the anthologized stanzas II and V; in Fa, only stanza V is excerpted. Stanza II is quoted by Raimon Vidal in So fo e.l tems and lines from it appear in the Doctrina d’acort. Stanza V, meanwhile, also appears in anthologies H and J, and two lines from it are quoted by Matfre in the Breviari, while a parody of it figures among the coblas esparsas in G. The most comprehensive exploitation of this song is therefore Dc, with two more specialized usages emerging from it. One of these is broadly Vidalian (a novas by Raimon Vidal himself, a grammatical treatise in the tradition of the Razos de trobar, and the poem by Jofre de Foixà who was also the author of another Vidalian treatise) and the other broadly clerical-satirical (the anthologies JGH and the spiritually edifying Breviari).
The song is one of wry complaint against Love, as summarized in the incipit (“Have mercy, Love! Let me not die so many times over!”). The potential humor of this line is amplified in its quotation by Jofre de Foixà as line 35 of his own song, when he accuses love of repeatedly killing and resuscitating him, so that his sufferings are worse than if he were to die once and for all (“qu’ieu trac piegz d’ome del tot moren,” 33; see Chapter 7). Folquet then proceeds to reflect ironically, in stanza II, on service and, in stanza V, on discretion. In Paolo Squillacioti’s edition, stanza II reads:
Per qu’er peccatz, Amors, so sabes vos,
si m’auzizetz, pos vas vos no m’azire;
mas trop servirs ten dan mantas sazos,
que son amic en pert om, so aug dire;
qu’ie.us ai servit et encars no m’en vire,
e quar sabetz qu’al gizardon n’aten,
ai perdut vos e.l servir eissamen.
(Song 5, 8–14)
You know it would be wrong of you, Love, to kill me for being unable to rebel against you; but too prolonged a service often causes harm, for it makes one lose one’s ally, so I have heard; for I have served you and still remain unswerving, and because you know that I hope to be rewarded for it, I have both lost you and wasted my effort.
Diverging from the usual trope that service breeds dissatisfaction in the one who serves, the stanza plays instead with the idea that it produces disenchantment in the one served, who is put off by prolonged, self-interested attention (13–14). I see lines 10–11 as anticipating this conclusion (amic referring to the ally thus served who, wearying of the role, ceases to be one), but they could also be understood as introducing the more familiar, converse situation, that the devotee (amic referring to the one serving) grows disillusioned with his long wait and gives up.
The stanza following continues the military metaphor of an impasse between the lover and Love by asking the lady to intervene forcibly to resolve it. In stanza IV the speaker is amazed at her long resistance to his desire, but dares not complain to her of his suffering: can she not simply read it in his eyes? This leads to the other widely excerpted stanza, stanza V:
A vos volgra mostrar lo mal qu’ieu sen
et als autres celar et escondire;
qu’anc no.us puec dir mon cor celadamen;
donc, s’ieu no.m sai cubrir qui m’er cubrire?
ni qui m’er fis s’ieu eis me sui traire?
qui se non sap celar non es razos
que.l celon cill a cui non es nuls pros.
(Song 5, 29–35)
I wish to show my suffering to you, and conceal and deny it to others. For I could never keep it secret when telling you what is in my heart, and if I cannot cover my feelings, who will cover for me? Who will be faithful to me if I betray myself? If someone doesn’t know how to keep a secret, it’s not reasonable to expect others who have no interest in doing so keep it so for him.
As Washer observes, in Dc, which includes both stanzas II and V, the sense of stanza V is changed by the absence of the intervening stanzas, since it appears to be about the singer’s difficulty speaking to Love rather than to his lady.27
Jofre is the only author to quote “Amors, merce” who does not attribute the borrowing to Folquet de Marselha; perhaps its incipit was famous enough for that to be unnecessary. The whole of stanza II is repeated by the frustrated knight in So fo (248–54, Appendix 5, #7). His bitterness at his lady’s indifference now that he has served her for seven years implies that his use of Folquet is close to the way I understand the stanza: as meaning, that is, that the very person who ought to be moved to reward his service has in fact been put off by it. Whereas Folquet struggles with his distress, however, the knight almost immediately takes up with the donzela to whom he quotes these lines. Uc de Mataplana’s verdict in the version of the novas discussed in Chapter 2 rules that the knight should return to the hard-hearted lady. This judgment in turn implies that the knight was wrong to assume that he was entitled to a reward for his service—wrong to attribute, that is, to Folquet’s authority the behavior that he himself supposed Folquet’s words to justify. Perhaps this is another instance where Uc is represented as a greater connoisseur of Occitan lyric than the knights and ladies of Limousin.
The medial lines 10–11 of this same stanza are quoted by Terramagnino da Pisa (#10, DA, 225–26) as the last in his list of examples of passages modeling forms of the noun amic and, by implication, the behavior that love poetry supposes in a lover (see Chapter 1). It seems from this context that the grammarian understood the lines more conventionally than Raimon Vidal, identifying the amic as the lover who serves unrequited for so long that he eventually quits. Folquet’s authority is supposed in order to uphold the grammarian’s knowledge of the subject of love in troubadour song.
There is more divergence in the uses made of Folquet’s stanza V. The obscene parody that occurs in G is not a quotation in the sense I define the word (though as a contrafactum it may reiterate Folquet’s music); it appears in a cluster of similarly transgressive reworkings of well-known courtly songs.28 In J the stanza appears in the company of other courtly didactic coblas.29 In H, where it directly follows Arnaut de Maruelh 30.15, it is accompanied by this directive:
Aquet auia uolontat de mostrar a sua dompna los mals q’el sentia per ella, e a totas cobrir e escondire. E mostra qe qi no sap si cobrir, qe mal lo cobrira autre. E cel qe si trais, greu l’er autre fis.
Folqet de Marselha
[A] uos uolgra mostrar lo mal q’eu sen. (H #167<22>)
This one wanted to reveal to his lady the ills that he suffered on her account and to conceal them from all other women. And he shows that he who does not know how to conceal for himself will not be well concealed by anyone else. And if someone betrays himself, another will scarcely be true to him.
Folquet de Marselha
I wish to show my suffering to you.
The compiler’s purported recapitulation strikingly omits the opening lines where Folquet protests that he cannot fail to express his sufferings to his lady. Instead of the dilemma of a lover caught between the need for discretion and the incapacity for dissimulation, the stanza becomes a sardonic comment on the politics of concealment. In the Breviari, however, lines 34–35 of this same stanza are quoted to exemplify the need to maintain discretion in the face of those who would betray it (#236, 33514.2–3). Resisting indiscretion (decelar) will help to safeguard the virtues of the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil, which Matfre has shown are equivalent to the qualities of divine Love voiced by troubadour song. In the Breviari the subject of knowledge of troubadour song is ultimately God himself, an authority to trump all others who alone is supposed to know what Folquet was supposed to have meant.
The practice of compiling anthologies of coblas feeds into that of troubadour quotation and may also be nourished by it. Florilegia perform on behalf of those who quote the acts of mutilation and solicitation that are intrinsic to quotation, especially in CmDcFa and H where the process of excerption is highlighted. The presence of attributions in these same manuscripts also parallels the usage of most authors who quote; their use of incipits finds an echo both in grammars and in vidas and razos; and their focus on whole stanzas gives them common ground with quotations in novas and the Breviari. As with Latin compilations of exempla or authorities, there is immense freedom in the uses to which the materials in all florilegia can be put. Anthologization is not a mode of confinement but a means of releasing the textual subject from entrapment in its original context. While the H compiler appears the most prescriptive, his combination of misleading paraphrase with ruthless abridgment in fact makes visible the adaptability of quotations to new contexts. The different experimental stances authorized by the same excerpts underline the paradoxical connection that exists between repetition and the freedom to adopt new subject positions.
Part III of this book examines the developments in quotation and sensibility to which this freedom gives rise from the second half of the thirteenth century. Before that, Chapters 5 and 6 reflect on what I have called the nightingales’ way and the parrots’ way, showing how these notions are to some extent inscribed in thirteenth-century texts. Chapter 6 returns to the florilegia in G and J, showing by a different path how quotation and anthologization interact.