The Troubadour and Trobairitz

The Troubadour or Trobairitz Troubadours were poet-composer of southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In an area known as Occitania (in the south of present-day France) there arose a class of composers known as troubadours. Stereotypically depicted as lute-bearing wanders, the troubadours were actually court-based poets, often of aristocratic standing. While many others traveled and preformed the troubadour’s creations, the troubadours perfected the art of composition, delivering their poetic verse through musical recitation. The romantic-poetic love song was born, and the concept quickly spread to other European areas.
The troubadour’s audience included the lord and his peers, the wife and her attendants, and others who resided within the court. Especially known for the praise songs that he wrote to address the noble wife of his employer, the troubadour expressed devotion and obedience in exchange for being made “a better man.” Although it may have led to romance in some cases, it was largely a symbolic gesture, an expression of love and admiration typical of the feudal obligatory system. The notion continued in the practice of chivalry, where the woman was upheld as the pure, weak, virtuous sex. Thus, courtly love was the subject of most troubadour songs, an expression of unattainable “worship of afar” that was to be met with rejection by the lady. The knight would in turn reply that he was “dying” from lack of returned affection. That the noble woman of Occitania began to write songs expressing their own feelings about matters of love is not only interesting, it was very unusual. The only known women troubadours were from that region, and their songs go on record as being among the first known secular works of women composers. “Trobairitz” were not of the knightly troubadour class but rather were the noble women to whom the knights sang. My reaction to these expressions romantic love is I find this intriguing and very interesting since I love the minstrel style music basically for the same reason I love mid-evil fairs and renascence fairs where knightly are of the middle Ages was my favorite time in history. It really doesn’t surprise me the content of the poetry because. The women troubadours, like Contessa de Dia, appropriate the language of male poets, use feudal metaphors sparingly, but describe the same symptoms, suggesting that lovesickness erases the emotional differences between men and women. The Contessa de Dia wrote about her unrequited love for a man.
Contessa de Dia was acknowledging her love for another and her regret for being faithful to her own husband, In other words she is telling the person the poem is to that it is alright for them to commit adultery so she invites him to do so.
References
Findley, B. (2006). Reading Sincerity at the Intersection of Troubadour/Trobairitz Poetry. Romance Quarterly, 53(4), 287-303.
Snodgrass, W. D. (2004). Troubadour Translations. Kenyon Review, 26(2), 56-61.
Léglu, C. (2006). Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours. A Bilingual Edition [book review]. The Modern Language Review, 101(4), 1106-1107.