The Novas del papagai from Catalonia to Italy
If Guillaume de Dole maps the nightingales’ way, two hilarious Occitan short stories can be read as a response to the issues raised by the parroting on which the Mediterranean transmission relies. Las novas del papagai (Tale of the parrot) and Frayre de Joy e Sor de Plazer (Brother of Joy and Sister of Pleasure) both present a male protagonist largely overshadowed by a talking bird, which serves as his factotum, especially in situations requiring diplomacy and courtship. The parrot that sweet-talks a lady into an erotic rendezvous with the knight Antiphanor in the Papagai (ca. 1250) may cut a less heroic figure than his master but is more resourceful. In the possibly later Frayre de Joy, parroting serves far-reaching (including spiritual) ends. Here a jeai—most likely a shortened form of papagai, or “popinjay” (parrot)—is given to Frayre de Joy by Virgil, who, in accordance with medieval tradition, is a master magician.1 The jeai restores the hero’s sleeping-beauty beloved to consciousness by magic, eloquently exonerates his master from blame for having made her pregnant while she was still asleep, ingeniously extricates itself from temporary capture, appeases the girl’s understandably upset parents, persuades them to allow the hero and heroine to marry, and hobnobs with the pope while arranging the baby’s baptism. This jeai is always in some sense a factotum following orders, yet its words are inspirational and transformative.2
The agency attributed to a parrot—as opposed to a nightingale—in these tales is both comic and unsettling.3 By turns subordinate and managerial, merely repetitive and wildly imaginative, the bird provides the main lines of communication in both stories and is the essential vehicle without which their plots could not advance. The parrot’s well-known capacity for mimicry turns a spotlight on the various forms of repetition that characterize the southern mode of reception, especially quotation. A bird’s supposed lack of reason may trouble the dividing lines between speaking, quoting, repeating, and merely copying, distinctions that, as we have seen, are none too assured.
Suzanne Thiolier-Méjean has shown how fictional parrots often display knowledge of foreign languages, especially Occitan; her conclusions confirm the parrot’s suitability to represent the verbatim percolation of Occitan through the multilingual Catalano-Occitano-Italian zone.4 But the bird’s purported multilingualism also manifests the monolangue as conceptualized by Jacques Derrida in Le monolinguisme de l’autre. By monolingualism, Derrida does not mean having only one language, even though some of the most moving parts of his book are those where he talks about the suppression of every language but French from his North African upbringing.5 He means more fundamentally that any language, once one is speaking it, both defines the speaker and yet is other to him—hence the expression “monolingualism of the other” (see Introduction, above). The effect of speaking a language is always uncanny because it is the only home one has, and yet one is never at home in it. Language is, in the words of Derrida’s subtitle, “a prosthesis of origin” in the sense that, while it appears the source of identities of all kinds, it is also an alien appendage, a contrivance that comes from without. As a mobile literary standard and language of culture, Occitan is prosthetic in this sense. Not only was it extensively used by Catalans and Italians; it also to some extent had to be learned even by troubadours from Occitan-speaking areas, being remarkably standardized regardless of their region of origin and not entirely native to any. As exotic birds, parrots are an apt representation of the otherness of literary Occitan to those who compose in it. They raise the possibility that all troubadours are parrots, not just those writers who explicitly imitate, copy, or quote from troubadour poems.
I focus on the Novas del papagai, the more relevant of the two stories since it is unquestionably parrot-centered and mid-thirteenth century. Five manuscripts transmit it, the divergences between them exhibiting both the kind of textual variation associated with the fabliaux6 and the tendency of Occitan narrative verse to assume longer and shorter versions (see Chapter 2).7 Such variations presumably reflect the tastes or expectations of different communities of readers within the Catalano-Occitano-Italian zone. In particular they offer rather different reflections on the nature and function of quotation.
Four of the five manuscripts that transmit the novas are the troubadour chansonniers R, J, G, and Da (the oldest section of D). The fifth stands apart: Florence Riccardiana 2756 is a late thirteenth-century Italian manuscript of Latin didactic works, at the end of which have been transcribed, as though they were prose, twenty-seven lines of Chrétien’s Cligés and some forty-two lines of the Papagai; I shall call this manuscript π.8 While π is the most marginal copy, the four chansonniers between them represent different strands of troubadour transmission. R is from Occitania, and seemingly reflects the prominence of Toulouse as a center of troubadour expertise in the fourteenth century.9 The Novas del papagai is found in the nonlyric section of R that also transmits three Occitan novas by the Catalan savant Raimon Vidal de Besalú, and an epistle by another Catalan, the troubadour Guillem de Berguedà.10 François Zufferey sees the presence of otherwise unaattested works by Catalans among these nonlyric pieces in R as a reflection of the literary links between Catalonia and Toulouse that developed during the fourteenth century when the Consistori de gai saber, based in Toulouse, vigorously promoted a troubadour revival.11 By contrast, D and G are both northern Italian chansonniers. The fourth, chansonnier J, though apparently copied in eastern Languedoc, has much in common with the Italian transmission, particularly with G, and seems to have been compiled from primarily Italian sources.12 Between them, the five manuscripts define the arc of territory in which Occitan is used, copied, and quoted; ordering them from west to east, we have R, then J, and then G and D, along with the non-chansonnier manuscript π. If R evokes Occitan as the monolangue in relation to Catalan, in J and G it becomes the monolangue in preference to Italian; while in D and π it coexists with other languages as well: French in the case of D, since the text comes shortly after three French salut-like texts and a little before the trouvère chansonnier H, which is bound into the same codex as D; Latin and French in that of π. In its various manifestations along this arc, the novas illuminates the parrots’ way of the troubadours’ Mediterranean reception.
The two manuscripts containing the longest, and probably complete, versions of the novas are those from Occitania, R and J; in all of the manuscripts originating in Italy the text is preserved in a shorter and perhaps fragmented form (Appendix 7 represents the different versions diagrammatically). R is the only copy to include an author’s name, Arnaut de Carcassès. The surname suggests an origin either in the immediate region of Carcassonne, or else in a village thirty kilometers to the south of it:13 in either case, in territories that were ruled by the Crown of Barcelona-Aragon until 1276 and that lay close to the linguistic frontier between Occitan and Catalan, probably just on the Occitan side of it. This chimes with the Catalano-Toulousain flavor of the nonlyric pieces in R. Moreover, since the novas in R is copied alongside other novas by Raimon Vidal, who was the first author to quote the troubadours (see Chapters 1 and 2), the R version of the Novas del papagai may also appear to address this literary vogue and its Catalan associations.
Da, G, and J, by contrast, all chansonniers with Italian roots, also share the common feature that they all contain collections of coblas esparsas or triadas from the troubadours. The florilegium in the Dc section of D consists mainly of well-known courtly songs that have been drastically reduced to Reader’s Digest proportions (see Chapter 4), but as these are copied in a different part of the manuscript from the Papagai I shan’t press for a relation between them and the novas. In J and G, however, the novas appears adjacent to the coblas esparsas, which are less courtly, and more humorous and satirical, than those in Dc, and are, moreover, similar in both manuscripts, since thirteen of the thirty-three coblas anthologized in G are also found among the seventy-four in J (see Appendix 2). The parrot in these manuscripts’ versions of the Novas del papagai also points to the practice of quotation, but—in G especially—the novas itself now appears as a text that can be excerpted, and therefore potentially quoted from. Thus, from one standpoint, we have an Occitan transmission (RJ) that favors longer texts versus an Italian one that favors shorter ones (GDπ). But from another, we have an emblematic parrot that in R reflects the practice, originating in Catalonia, of containing quotations from the troubadours; and one that in G, and to some extent also in JD and π, also recalls the practice, originating in Italy, of copying and excerpting works so that they can become quotations.
The plot begins in the same way in the versions found in both chansonniers R and J. The narrator overhears a parrot in a garden wooing a lady on behalf of its master, the knight Antiphanor, son of a king. The lady refuses all his advances on the grounds that she has a husband whom she loves, but the parrot, by means of a bravura rhetorical performance, wins her over. At the point where the lady consents to return Antiphanor’s love the versions diverge. In J the parrot goes back with the good news to his master and hurries him off to the garden. Briefly affirming their love for one another, lover and lady kiss and “took their solace” (J, 167; feron de lor solatz) until the parrot returns to warn them of the husband’s return. Compelled to separate, they promise to meet again, Antiphanor pronouncing a 56-line oath swearing to love the lady faithfully. So long a speech is surprising, given the husband’s threatening proximity, and feels disproportionate in a text that is, in total, only 245 lines long. In this version, then, the parrot speaks first, setting up the subsequent love scene in which the human beings speak about and perform their love, represented as a form of fin’ amor.
In R, the narrative is more focused on the parrot and more fabliau-esque. When the lady has agreed to requite Antiphanor’s love, she entrusts it with love tokens for its master, which the parrot duly conveys. It then urges Antiphanor to seal the deal and meet the lady. A good way to distract the husband’s attention, the parrot suggests, would be to set fire to his castle; Antiphanor agrees and sends the parrot back to the lady to confirm the details of their rendezvous. The parrot then executes its cunning plan, flying to the castle carrying Greek fire in a cauldron clutched in its little toes. The castle blazes merrily, the lovers meet in the garden, but the fire is eventually put out and the parrot warns them they must part. The lady exhorts Antiphanor to be valiant and he departs cheerfully with the parrot. The narrator signs his name and declares he composed this tale as a warning to husbands who try to lock up their wives. As compared with the version in J, the R text reduplicates meetings between the lovers and the parrot, and records almost no exchanges between the lovers themselves. Less courtly than in J, the lovers’ meeting in R is humorously paralleled by the burning castle and, when the “fire” has been put out, they seem quite content to separate with no thought of a future meeting.
The way the story develops in R is more familiar to modern readers since R is the base of most editions, but the J version is better represented in medieval copies. In G, the tale ends just after the parrot’s return to Antiphanor with the expectation that the lovers will meet; the motif of the gifts is absent, aligning G with J. In G, furthermore, Antiphanor’s long address to the lady, which forms the end of the story in J, is copied as a separate text a few folios before the beginning of the tale. As this passage is entirely in the first person, when severed from the novas it is a completely freestanding text, like a salut. Indeed, some scholars believe it to be an originally independent “address to a lady,” or domnejaire, that was appended to the novas in J, rather than an originally integral part of the novas that was excerpted in G; its potential existence as a poem in its own right is acknowledged in the award of its own PC number, 461.VI.14 The same extract or domnejaire is copied as a freestanding item in D, which otherwise contains none of the rest of the novas. The short extract in the only non-chansonnier manuscript, π, corresponds to the first eighty or so lines of the common beginning, but is closer to J and G than to R.
Most scholarship on these variant versions is preoccupied with identifying the original form of the tale. My approach, however, is not chronological but geographical, as I trace the insights of the different copies into the reception of troubadour poetry along the parrots’ way, as it stretches from Catalonia, via Occitania, to northern Italy. Since all versions of the Novas del papagai share the first panel constituted by the parrot’s persuasion of the lady, this common element will be considered first.
Our entire knowledge of Antiphanor in this first part of the text comes from the parrot’s representation of him as the best knight in the world who has, the parrot claims, already fought to demonstrate his love for the lady. Initially the parrot is represented as the mere intermediary of a message that allegedly originated with Antiphanor: “I am a messenger . . . Antiphanor . . . sends you greetings . . . and asks you through me” (Messatje soy . . . Antiphanor . . . vos tramet salutz . . . e prega.us per mi; R, 8–16; JGπ).15 Antiphanor is, says the parrot, sick with love that only the lady can heal (this last motif is more extensively elaborated in JGπ), a message hardly striking for its originality. Soon, however, the parrot starts embroidering independently:
Encara.us dic may, per ma fe
per que.l devetz aver merce:
car, si.eus play, morir vol per vos
may que per autre vieure joios.
(R text, 19–22; Jπ)16
And I tell you further, by my faith, why you should have mercy on him: for if it pleases you [or perhaps rather: thus I pledge to you, <plevir], he prefers to die for you rather than to love happily through someone else.
Only at this point does the lady respond, and clearly she is impressed: “You seem to me extremely/excessively good at arguing” (R, 26, “Trop me paretz enrazonatz”; with less reservation in JG, “molt mi pares enrazonatz”). Now that the lady has been drawn into argument, the parrot is forced to continue improvising. To each rhetorical sally the lady responds with humorous admiration. The parrot is so eloquent, she says, that if only it were a knight it would have no shortage of girlfriends! But she still has no intention of betraying her husband. Finally, the parrot delivers its winning speech (R, 66–9o; JG),17 a virtuoso performance that begins with reformulations of some of its previous inducements, then continues with new ones fired off in a rapid salvo: loving Antiphanor in secret need not prevent the lady loving her husband in public, she is obliged to have mercy on a love-struck suitor (both these arguments have been made before); she should take heed of the exemplary love of Blanchefleur, Iseut, and Thisbe; it will do her no good if Antiphanor pines away, on the contrary the god of love will punish her, and it, the parrot, will blacken her name as much as it can.18 The parrot here acts as a jongleur-troubadour, capable of reciting songs of courtship, but also in command of a repertoire of narrative works and a satirical tongue that it would not hesitate to use against her. In the face of this rhetorical barrage, the lady gives in, repeating her earlier admiration for the parrot’s eloquence and even repeating some of its words as she does so: “And I tell you further that I am amazed you know how to woo so well” (Encara.us dic que.m meravelh / car vos tan gent [sabetz] prejar; R, 92–93; JG). She is explicit that the parrot’s wooing is the reason for her love: “As a result of your entreaty I will love him and never leave him” (pels vostres precx, l’amaray / et ja de luy no.m partiray; R 102–3; JG).19 The clichés in this episode are pronounced as much by the characters as by the parrot, and the whole of this opening panel confirms what Paul Carter says in his study Parrot: “We persist in thinking that parrots merely mimic us, when their mimicry is a way of telling us that we are mimics.”20
A relation between the parrot and quotation is forged in this, the common stock of the novas in the various versions. But these versions diverge in their represent at ion of the parrot’s role and of the concept of “parroting,” following the arc from west to east described starting with R on the Catalano-Occitan side, and then moving on to J, G, D, and finally π.
The development of the second half of the story in R begins with a delicious display of the parrot’s proverbial skill as a mimic. The lady entrusts it with traditional love gifts:
qu’el mon non cug n’aya pus bel,
ab sest cordo ab aur obrat,
que.l prenga per m’amistat
(R text, 104–7)
So take him this ring for me, which I don’t believe can be bettered anywhere in the world, together with this cord worked with gold, for him to take out of friendship for me.
The parrot duly delivers them, repeating word for word “And I give you this ring . . .”:
E tramet vos aquest anel
qu’el mon non cug n’aya pus bel,
ab sest cordo ab aur obrat,
que.l prendatz per m’amistat.
(R text, 136–39)
Such exact repetition indicates that this version at least might be guying the Catalan author Raimon Vidal’s novas with their scholarly, verbatim quotations from the troubadours. However, if the lady gives the parrot full instructions for it to repeat, the material Antiphanor gives his factotum to communicate back to the lady is much less polished. All he can say is, “Go back and talk to her again and tell her these things we have spoken about.”
Tornatz prymier al parlamen
a lieys parlar, si a vos platz,
doncx sestas razos li mostratz.
(R text, 153–55)
Antiphanor’s speech relies on earlier speech and in particular his phrase “sestas razos” refers back to the parrot’s own suggestion that it could set fire to the husband’s castle so as to create an opportunity for the lady and Antiphanor to meet. Antiphanor’s commission, then, adds strictly nothing to what the parrot has already said: the parrot has no one to quote but itself, and Antiphanor, as the name may imply, is merely the parrot’s echo, or antiphon.21 Keen to avoid any slip-up on the part of these unimaginative human beings, the parrot spells out how Antiphanor can benefit from the proposed diversion:
E can lo foc er abrassatz,
poiretz intrar per espatz,
ab vostra dompna domenjar
e lieis tener et abrassar.
(R text, 148–51)
And when the fire is set alight you can easily get in, pay court to your lady, and hold and kiss her.
It is even more explicit with the lady, giving her step-by-step instructions on how to admit Antiphanor to the garden and take pleasure with him in a bed.
In the passage just quoted (lines 148–51), the parrot not only plans to fire the castle, it also establishes the fire as metaphor for the lover’s sexual activity by means of the pun on abrassatz, meaning first “set alight” and then “embrace.” The resulting identification of fin’ amor with arson is hilarious. Is it even possible that the much repeated word foc, in the succession “metre foc” (253, 259), “Al foc!” (260), “E.l foc fo totz adormatatz” (275), “que.l foc es mortz” (283), recalls the verb fotre? In any case insistence on the sequence “set fire” “fire!” “the fire receded,” “the fire was dead,” with its exact parallel in the actions of the lovers, all too manifestly mimics the successive phases of their encounter. The parrot in the R version of the Novas del papagai not only repeats and dictates the words of the characters, it shapes their desires, leads them to perform them, and exhibits what is most intimate about them in a farcical external display. Muscle-bound and inarticulate, Antiphanor in particular has his identity shaped by the parrot as his prosthesis, monolinguist, and comic double.22
In the J version of the novas, the immediate consequence of the opening scene in which the parrot woos the lady is the encounter between the lovers. This might lead us to expect that the model of real human courtship in the second would expose as a mere copy the courtship performed by the parrot, but such an expectation would be disappointed. Although the parrot claims to be simply a messenger, the feelings and attitudes of both humans turn out to be heavily mediated by it. The lady opens her meeting with Antiphanor by telling him that, if she has formed an excellent impression of him, it is thanks to the parrot:
Gran tems ha, non ui caualier,
tan mi plagues, si dieu mi sal,
per uostre papagai uos ual,
car hieu uos uei tan plazentier
pero, quar es tan ben parlier,
e per lo be que.m di de uos,
e quar es tan bel e tan pros
farai uostre comandamen.
(J text, 136–43)
I’ve not for a long time seen a knight who pleased me as much, so save me God, you have your parrot to thank for this, that [or for?] I see you so agreeable, and so, because you are so eloquent, and because of the good things it told me about you, and because you are so handsome and valiant, I will do your command.
The syntax of this passage is left somewhat floating in Stengel’s punctuation, but it appears that the knight’s pleasing looks were sculpted in the lady’s mind by the parrot (“per uostre papagai uos ual / car hieu uos uei tan plazentier”) before they could be confirmed by her observation (“quar es tan bel e tan pros”), whereas the parrot’s eloquence in speaking well of his master (“per lo ben que.m di de uos”) was first of all an attribute of Antiphanor himself (“quar es tan ben parlier”). Antiphanor declares he will love the lady loyally and offers to swear to that effect. This convinces her enough to dispense him from further oaths, because she has already decided that he is “courtly, wise and valiant” (cortes, sauis, e pros; J text, 162), another phrase that rings as a redite, this time of her earlier recognition of his qualities as communicated by the parrot. We may know in theory that all discourse is pervaded by citationality, but having its effects concentrated in a parrot that alternates between the roles of ventriloquist and dummy so that one can no longer tell which is which, delivers that recognition with a shock of laughter. The oath that ends this version of the tale, but is found elsewhere as an independent text, expresses the fidelity that Antiphanor earlier offered to swear, but did not; postponing it allows the lovers to kiss and embrace in the little time that remains before the parrot calls a halt on the grounds of the husband’s return. Unlike in R, where consummation leads to what looks like a definitive separation, the parrot in J leads the fin aman to embrace constancy in hopes of further meetings, sentiments expressed in the long quasi-lyric address by the knight to the lady. In this version of the Novas del papagai, the parrot evokes less the formal act of quotation than the infinite recyclability of troubadour love discourse and the endless sublimation it performs.
Another difference from R is that whereas in R the novas forms part of an Occitano-Catalan nonlyric cluster, in J it is the only narrative in the chansonnier. It is copied immediately after a series of cansos grouped by author and shortly before its concluding collection of isolated stanzas, from which it is separated by two lyrics of different genres: a widely copied parodic wish-fantasy sirventes by Pistoleta (372.3), listing all the things he would like and doesn’t have, and a silly tenso between Gaucelm Faidit and Perdigon on the question of which is more reprehensible, a husband who guards a beautiful wife or one who polices an ugly one (167.47 = 370.12). The opening coblas in the florilegium likewise promote courtly behavior and condemn adultery. The desire for wisdom like Solomon’s features as a shared theme in a stanza of Pistoleta’s song and in the third of the isolated coblas, a much-copied anonymous anthology piece (461.154). The Novas del papagai thereby appears as a fulcrum tipping between love songs and scraps of rueful wisdom regarding love. Its dialogue form, opposing an initially faithful lady and a corrupting parrot, may also chime with its position close to the tenso about adultery. The parrot’s involvement in iteration in the J version of the novas is paralleled by the way the text leads on to excerpts and the courtly knowledge they may bring, but the novas does not itself yet figure as a quotation.
In the Italian manuscripts D, G, and π, however, the “parrot factor” takes a new turn as the “lover’s oath” part of the novas is itself excerpted—that is, unless we see the text in J as originally comprising independent texts that have been joined together.23 In G the tale is found, as in J, almost immediately before a collection of coblas triadas. In J the novas is the only nonlyric work, but G places it in a small group of ensenhamens and saluts that has been inserted between its main lyric corpus and the florilegium. (This nonlyric section of texts in rhyming couplets has some overlap with that of R, but without the Catalan reminiscences; conversely in R there are no Italian-style coblas triadas.) The most striking feature of G is its separation of the J text into two parts. The domnejaire, or closing monologue, of the Papagai (sixty-four lines) is copied anonymously and without rubric on folio 120r following Arnaut de Maruelh’s ensenhamen “Razos es e mezura” (30.VI) and his salut “Donmna genser q’eu no sair dir” (30.III).24 It is followed on folios 120v–127v by two more saluts (Falquet de Romans’ “Dompna eu pring conjat de vos,” 156.1, misattributed here to Pons de Capdoill, and Raimbaut d’Aurenga’s “Donna, cel qe.us es bos amics,” 389.1) and by Garin lo Brun’s ensenhamen “El termini d’estiu” (163.1).25 Then, beginning on folio 127v, the first part of the Papagai is copied in a form shortened from J’s 110 lines to 98 by the omission of most of the lady’s protestations of fidelity to her husband, and ending with her agreeing to receive Antiphanor. It appears, then, as a short dialogue between a lady and a parrot in which the parrot easily persuades the lady to betray her husband. It is followed by a satirical two-cobla exchange between Blacatz and another troubadour (?Peire Pelisiers), asking which of three thieves received the worst punishment for his theft (97.3 = 353.2), and a scurrilous two-stanza celebration of un fotaire (461.241). In short, G represents the domnejaire part of the novas as a freestanding salut alongside other saluts, and then tilts the opening dialogue with the parrot toward satire. In their abridged form vis-à-vis other manuscripts, these two parts of the novas appear as anthology pieces, and thus on the way to themselves becoming quotations, especially given their proximity to the G florilegium.
The last part of the novas in J is also found as a self-contained domnejaire at the end of the section of D known as Da, thought to be the oldest chansonnier in existence. At some distance from Dc, the florilegium of Ferrarino da Ferrara, the domnejaire in Da is not explicitly connected to excerption. It does, however, share the courtly didactic quality of the Dc anthology more than the scurrilous orientation of JG, since it follows directly after a short encyclopedic text (Peire Corbian’s Tezaur). Charmaine Lee underlines the preference on the part of Italian audiences, already suggested by other scholars, for courtly didacticism and their tendency to shy away from narratives of adultery,26 and this may explain why, in this pioneering chansonnier, only the most anodyne part of the novas is included: the parrot and its wily seduction are gone.
They reappear, however, in π, the least monolingual of all the manuscripts, since the extract found there, copied in a space at the end of a compilation of Latin and French didactic texts, is juxtaposed with the excerpt from Cligés in such a way as potentially to draw attention to their common use of Greek protagonists (Antiphanor is a Greek name). Indeed, the text of the π excerpt is itself distinctly hybrid, the parrot’s first words to the lady being full of Italianisms: “Donna, Dieu vu sal, / messagier sum, ne vu sia mal; / del miglior cabbaler cum fus” (π text, Wesselofsky, lines 7–9). Antiphanor’s prosthesis has lost touch with the refined literary standard of the other manuscripts, producing a mishmash resembling other examples of parrot talk identified by Thiolier-Méjean.27 Unlike in other copies of the novas, the parrot’s memory in π is certainly not of the best. The extract tails off in the course of the bird’s attempts to persuade the lady by reminding her of famous literary lovers. Alas, these memorable tales prove too much for it to remember; both text and meter seem to drift out of control (the editor does not even attempt line divisions):
Domna de vus me meravil, che de bom cor non ll’amez, Nel vu remembre de Flur et de Blanceflur, d’Isotto c’amo Trittan,
E de Tisbe co al* pertus *MS alal
Ala parleva Perannus? (π text, Wesselofsky, p. 329)
Lady, I am amazed at your not loving him with a good heart. Don’t you remember Floire and Blanchefleur, Iseut who loved Tristan, and Thisbe who, at the hole, went and spoke to Pyramus?
A Pyramus crossed with perennial is frankly not that perennial. In this manuscript, so distant from the chansonnier tradition, the parrot and the Occitan love discourse that it represents have lost their standing to the prestige monolangue of Latin.
In conclusion, then, the parrot in the Novas del papagai epitomizes the parrots’ way that stretches across the northern Mediterranean from Catalonia to northern Italy. In Derrida’s terms, the parrot, as it directs the speech and actions of the characters it allegedly serves, is a prosthesis embodying the colonializing otherness of language to the speaker, the fabrication in language of identities and desires, and the repetitions it involves whether it is explicitly quoted or not. The manuscript context of the novas promotes interaction between the parrot and various modes of textual repetition—especially quoting and being quoted—but also reveals differences between the dominant modes of repetition in different areas. The version in R, copied alongside the two novas of Raimon Vidal that contain quotations from the troubadours, is the only one in which the parrot literally quotes verbatim; it seemingly pokes fun at quoting the troubadours as potentially incendiary; the attribution to Arnaut de Carcassès strengthens reference to the specifically Catalan use of Occitan. In J the parrot is caught up in recycling courtly discourse without, however, there being any formal quotation; the novas forms a bridge between lyric texts and a satirical florilegium. G’s version places the knight’s monologue among other saluts, pares down the narrative core to a tenso-like dialogue about adultery, and makes both segments function as anthology pieces anticipating its collection of coblas triadas. The courtly value of excerption is clearest in D where, however, the parrot is absent. In π, the parrot loses its credibility in proximity to the primarily Latin compendium. While the novas’ content laughs at our uncanny relation to language and desire, its diverse manuscript situations discreetly evoke the troubadour diaspora and the plurilingualism of the northern Mediterranean.