Lewis Freeman Mott

"Just as the ideas settled into a system, so the free forms of popular poetry also hardened into categories, so that later writers were enabled to set down a code of almost absolute laws. Even very early care for form became excessive. As a general rule, the rhymes of every stanza throughout a poem are identical; there was an effort to devise new kinds of poetry; complicated rhyming schemes were invented; to these were added word-play, alliteration and forced constructions; difficulties of every kind were sought. Some poets even boasted it as a merit that they could not be understood.This artificiality and elaboration seem strange when we remember that neither the poets nor their audiences were really educated people. Some few authors, it is true, possessed a slight acquaintance with the Classics,—enough to make an occasional allusion to Ovid,—but there were many who could not even read their native tongue. These, of course, transmitted their songs orally to the jongleur, who preserved both words and music in his memory."

"There was the vers, a simple, early form, which developed into the canso. This was an elaborate poem, of from five to seven stanzas, dealing always with the subject of love, and requiring a melody of its own. On the other hand, from the sirventesc love was properly excluded, and it was written to fit some well-known and popular air. The subject was moral or religious, political or personal. In the planh the poet lamented the death of his patron, or his lady-love. A most curious form was the tenso, a play of wit, in which, usually with great personal bitterness, two poets debated, in alternate stanzas, such questions as: Which are the greater, the benefits or the ills of love? Which contribute most to keep a lover faithful, the eyes or the heart? Which loves the more deeply, one who can not keep from speaking to everyone of his lady, or one who does not speak of her at all, but thinks of her night and day?Such questions of love causistry are thoroughly characteristic of the social element in the troubadour poetry. They are questions of which the knights and ladies seemed never weary."

"Again and again we find the same ideas expressed in the same language. In the Provençal lyric formalism crushed and annihilated all freshness and life."

"The poetry of the troubadours was essentially social in character. Unlike Goethes minstrel, who sang as the bird among the branches, these bards exercised their art for the sake of applause and gain,—a recompense which could be won only by pleasing the knights and ladies gathered at the court of some wealthy and noble patron. Of the three classes into which feudal society was divided—commons, clergy and nobles—the last alone possessed either the means or the desire to reward literary and musical skill. It was to this class, therefore, to the Counts of Provence and Toulouse, to Eleanore of Aquitaine and Ermengarde of Narbonne, to Richard the Lionhearted and Alfonso of Aragon, that the Provençal lyric was addressed."

"Illiterate and yet cultivated, these lords and ladies demanded of their poets a strict adherence to generally recognized conventional forms, and, at the same time, an elaboration of artificial conceits and an originality of metrical complication, which gave pleasure in the feeling of difficulties overcome.The conventionalism, both in ideas and in forms, must be obvious to every reader. Instead of the description of nature, we find vague references to green meadows, fragrant flowers, and singing birds. It is the same with the expression of love. The griefs and joys of the lover, his hopes and cares, are set forth in general terms. The detail that would give life to the picture is conspicuously absent. Even in the most personal songs of affection, sorrow or hatred, there is the same indefiniteness of image. A fund of materials was accumulated from which all could draw. The chief demand upon the poet was that these materials should be perpetually rearranged in slightly varied combinations."

"Even in the exhortations to the Crusades, love is often more prominent than duty toward God and the Church. Usually it was only at the close of life that the other world cast its shadow upon their thoughts. Many of them, atoning for lighter days by fasting and penance, ended their careers in the cloister."

"In the ancient land of vintage and dance and sun-burnt mirth, there resounded during the Middle Ages a sweet chorus of song, which was the delight, not only of the native lords and ladies, but of cultivated society in all neighboring countries. Spreading to France, Spain, Germany and Italy, its underlying ideas and fancies furnished the basis of much that is greatest in medieval literature. Its sudden appearance, its rapid development, its brief glory, and its untimely extinction, invest this lyric outburst with a special, almost tragic, interest."

"In the eleventh century the nobility, which had previously been terribly rough and barbarous, began to grow more refined. Under the influence of favorable conditions, chivalry was developed. Particularly in the south of France, where wealth had long accumulated and where, through rights, taxes and the sale of privileges, it flowed largely into the hands of the great lords, the delight in life became conspicuous. Prodigality was the fashion. As in the Elizabethan age in England, the love of splendor manifested itself particularly in gorgeousness of dress and magnificence of entertainments. A host of attendants accompanied the man of rank, and the ideal prince bestowed gifts lavishly and without thought upon knights, squires, and, above all, upon jongleurs.These jongleurs—the successors of the Latin Mimi—supplied entertainment to the commons at the fairs and to the higher classes at their feasts. The meaner kind not only recited, sang and played on musical instruments, but performed as jugglers, dancers, acrobats and exhibitors of trained animals. But the courtly singers were not of this order. Though mostly professional minstrels, they were not infrequently the friends and companions of princes. When they wandered from castle to castle, they were honorably received; when they attached themselves to some particular patron, they were caressed and richly paid. We are told that one great lord was so highly pleased with the first song of Aimeric de Pegulhan that he gave him his own palfrey and the very clothes he wore."

"A jongleur was one who, either as author or performer, made poetry and music a profession. The name troubadour, on the other hand, was reserved for him who composed, whether for money or merely for pleasure. It is among the troubadours, therefore, that we find the greatest variety of personages. Some were peasants or townsmen, some poor knights, some unfrocked priests or monks. Such made a living by song. Their rivals in fame, though not in pecuniary reward, included powerful barons, princes, and even kings. Music and verse, it must be remembered, were inseparable, and the author was almost invariably the composer as well. Those who could sing, moreover, produced their own compositions to the accompaniment of the fiddle or the harp; others employed professional singers, who frequently carried the song to a distant patron or friend."

"Every poet uttered the same exaggerated laments and praises. He would contrast his past joy with his present grief, and resolve to abandon song forever—a resolution, it may be said, that was rarely kept. Nothing could alleviate such pain, nor could words express it: joy is hateful, the mere thought of his loss is enough to slay the mourner; it were better to have died first, for the world seems miserable and worthless; all people are called upon to join in weeping, and curses are heaped upon false, traitorous, injurious Death. At the same time, the lady is represented as the best, noblest, completest, that could exist; she is the summit and the source of worth and virtue; with her everything splendid has sunk into the grave: may the Lord save her soul and place her among the saints in heaven."

"When Simon de Montfort destroyed the chivalry of Southern France, the troubadours perished from the earth. Some few, indeed, might keep alive a spark of the old spirit in foreign lands, but the flame was spent, and it could not be rekindled. In 1324 the townsmen of Toulouse tried to revivify the ancient lyric, but the Floral Games which they instituted, with prizes and degrees distributed before a great concourse of citizens, could not invigorate this child of chivalry. The old forms were maintained—indeed they were reduced to a science—and the lyric which had celebrated earthly passion now celebrated the love of the Virgin Mary and the love of God. Yet all real life had fled. The Provençal lyric was the offspring and the expression of chivalric society, and when that society died, this lyric died with it.It was no problem poetry, as so much of our recent verse pretends to be. Limited in range, and appealing to the fancy rather than to the heart, it produced no surpassing singer, no Burns, no Heine. But its influence still survives. Like a butterfly among the flowers, it flourished for its brief season, and then perished utterly. And yet, in the artistic impulse which it gave to poetic endeavor, in the civilizing and, with all its faults, elevating influence which it exerted upon European ideals, and in the passionate, tender and brave romance with which it has gifted succeeding generations, the Provençal lyric remains, and must remain, a precious—in truth, an invaluable—contribution to universal literature."