The troubadours

The north of France was the birth country and chief seat of epic poetry in the Middle Ages. The chanson de geste, the roman, the fabliau frequently bear witness of a consummate grace of narrative diction. Even the lyrical effusions of the Trouvère not seldom take the form of the monologue or dialogue. The poet loves to hide his personality under the mask of a fictitious character. Sometimes he is the maiden longing for love and spring, who from the seclusion of her cloister raises her voice against the robbers of her liberty, malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete; sometimes, like Rutebœuf, he listens to the vulgar quarrels of ‘Charlie and the barber,’ or, like Charles d’Orleans, the sweet chansonnier in French and English, holds converse with

The narrative and dramatic instincts of modern French writers are distinctly manifest in their mediæval confrères.

This is different with the Troubadour, the poet of Southern France. He is the lyrical singer par excellence, speaking in his own undisguised person and of his own subjective passion. Hence the truth and intensity, but hence also the monotonousness and conventional phraseology of passion, alternately characteristic of the Provençal love-song. But the narrative instinct was not entirely wanting in the poets of the langue d’oc. The great wave of epic song which kept continually crossing the Channel from the Celt to the French Norman, and back again to the Saxon and Anglo-Norman, left its flotsam on the shores of Southern France. Neither did the half-mystic glory of Charlemagne and his peers fail to impress the imagination of the chivalrous Troubadours. We possess, or at least know of the existence of, Provençal epics from both the Carlovingian and Arthurian circles. Although comparatively small in number and importance, these deserve a passing mention.

The epic poetry of southern, like and on the same principle as that of northern France, may be broadly divided into the popular, and the artistic or individual narrative. The two classes differ as widely as possible both as regards metrical form and poetical treatment. The popular epic was sung or chanted to a monotonous tune, the artistic recited. The former uses frequently the assonance (identity of vowels, but difference of consonants) in strophes or tirades of varying length; the latter, exclusively rhyme in couplets. The popular epic is fond of introducing standing formulas and epithets, and the recurrence of similar situations or motives is marked by the naïve repetition of the identical phrase. The poet himself disappears behind his work; he is nothing but the mouthpiece of popular feeling and tradition. Different from this, the artistic poet takes individual shape in his work. He groups his material with conscious study of narrative effects, frequently adds new inventions to the legend he treats, and is fond of interrupting the narrative by reflections of his own, moral or otherwise as the case may be.

Of the popular epic very few specimens remain, and of these few one at least, the ‘Ferabras,’ seems a translation from the North-French. The representative poem of the class is the old Provençal epic, ‘Girart de Rossilho,’ a splendid example of early mediæval spirit, crude in sentiment and diction, coarse and irregular in its metrical structure, but powerful and of sterling quality, like the hero it celebrates. Like the ‘Chanson de Roland’—the representative epic of Northern France—Girart de Rossilho belongs to the Carlovingian circle of legendary lore. But there is a considerable difference between the two poems as regards the conception of the Carlovingian idea, if that modern term may be allowed. The older French poem shows the great Emperor in full possession of his power, and surrounded by his loyal Peers. The younger Provençal epic reflects the revolutionary spirit of the great vassals under the weak descendants of the great Charles. Its hero, indeed, Girart of Rossilho, is the head of these rebellious barons, and his brave deeds in the wars with his feudal lord are held up to admiration, while, on the other hand, the Emperor Charles Martel (evidently a mistake on the part of the minstrel for Charles the Bald, correctly reintroduced in a later French version) is made the embodiment of meanness and treachery. After perusing Girart’s exploits, some of them of a rather doubtful character according to our notions, it is satisfactory to know that he at least departed life with a clean bill of morality. The author himself seems to feel somewhat uneasy on the subject. ‘But,’ he argues, ‘if Girart did great evil at first, he made full and speedy compensation at last, for he did great penance in a cloister—which he himself built beautifully and at great cost.’ There he is said to have supported amongst other pious personages ‘one hundred maidens.’ ‘And the priests,’ the manuscript continues, ‘do nothing but pray God for him and the Lady Bertha his wife. And he gave them a thousand marks free of taxes; and one can see well that he means to go there.’ Thus the Holy Church was the gainer, and having, as Mephistopheles says, ‘a good stomach able to digest ill-gotten pelf,’ she may, for all we know, have long rejoiced in the prosperity of the holy damsels. Whether Girart actually entered his pious institution the manuscript does not say; but such a close of such a career was by no means rare in the middle ages.