Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/897

Rh L1TEKATUKE.J PKOVENQAL decessors and contemporaries disappeared with the genera tions who heard and sang them ; arid in the contrast in form and subject between the Boetius poem and the stanzas of William IX. we find evidence that by the llth century Provengal poetry was being rapidly developed in various directions. Whence came this poetry ? How and by whose work was it formed 1 That it has no connexion whatever with Latin poetry is generally admitted. There is absolutely nothing in common either in form or ideas between the last productions of classical Latinity, as they appear in Sidonius Apollinaris or Fortunatus, and the first poetic compositions in Romanic. The view which seems to meet with general acceptance, though it has not been distinctly formulated by any one, is that Romanic poetry sprang out of a popular poetry quietly holding its place from the Roman times, no specimen of which has survived, just as the Romanic languages are only con tinuations with local modifications of vulgar Latin. There are both truth and error in this opinion. The question is really a very complex one. First as to the form : Romanic versification, as it appears in the Boetius poem and the verses of William IX., and a little farther north in the poem of the Passion and the Life of St Leger (10th or llth century), has with all its variety some general and permanent characteristics : it is rhymed, and it is composed of a definite number of syllables certain of which have the syllabic accent. This form has evident affinity with the rhythmic Latin versification, of which specimens exist from the close of the Roman empire in ecclesiastical poetry. The exact type of Romanic verse is not found, however, in this ecclesiastical Latin poetry; the latter was not popular, and it may be assumed that there was a popular variety of rhythmic poetry from which Romanic verse is derived. Again, as regards the substance, the poetic material, we find nothing in the earliest Provengal which is strictly popular. The extremely personal compositions of William IX. have nothing in common with folklore. They are subjective poetry addressed to a very limited and probably rather aristocratic audience. The same may be said of the Boetius poem, though it belongs to the quite different species of edifying literature; at any rate it is not popular poetry. Vernacular compositions seem to have been at first produced for the amusement, or in the case of religious poetry for the edification, of that part of lay society which had leisure and lands, and reckoned intellectual pastime among the good things of life. Gradually this class, intelligent, but with no Latin education, enlarged the circle of its ideas. In the 12th century and still more in the 13th, historical works and popular treatises on contemporary science were composed for its use in the only language it understood ; and vernacular literature continued gradually to develop partly on original lines and partly by borrow ing from the literature of the &quot; clerks.&quot; But in the llfch century vernacular poetry vas still rather limited, and has hardly any higher object than the amusement and edifica tion of the upper classes. An aristocratic poetry like the oldest Provengal cannot be the production of shepherds and husbandmen ; and there is no probability that it was invented or even very notably improved by William IX. From what class of persons then did it proceed 1 Latin chroniclers of the Middle Ages mention as joculares, jocula- tores, men of a class not very highly esteemed whose pro fession consisted in amusing their audience either by what we still call jugglers tricks, by exhibiting performing animals, or by recitation and song. They are called joglars in Provengal, jouglers or jougleors in French. A certain Barnaldus, styled joglarim, appears as witness in 1058 to a charter of the chartulary of Saint Victor at Marseilles. In 1106 the act of foundation of a salva terra in Rouergue 873 specifies that neither knight nor man-at-arms nor joculator is to reside in the village about to be created. These individuals successors of the mimi and the thymdid of antiquity, who were professional amusers of the public were the first authors of poetry in the vernacular both in the south and in the north of France. To the upper classes who welcomed them to their castles they supplied that sort of entertainment now sought at the theatre or in books of light literature. There were certain of them who, leaving buffoonery to the ruder and less intelligent members of the profession, devoted themselves to the composition of pieces intended for singing and conse quently in verse. In the north, where manners were not so refined and where the taste for warlike adventure pre vailed, the jongleurs produced chansons de geste full of tales of battle and combat. In the courts of the southern nobles, where wealth was more abundant and a life of ease and pleasure was consequently indulged in, they produced love songs. There is probably a large amount of truth in the remark made by Dante in chapter xxv. of his Vita Nuova, that the first to compose in the vulgar tongue did so because he wished to be understood by a lady who would have found it difficult to follow Latin verses. 1 And in fact there are love songs among the pieces by William of Poitiers ; and the same type preponderates among the compositions of the troubadours who came immediately after him. But it is worthy of note that in all this vast body of love poetry there is no epithalamium nor any address to a marriageable lady. The social conditions of the south of France in the feudal period explain in great measure the powerful development of this kind of poetry, and also its peculiar characteristics the profound respect, the extreme deference of the poet towards the lady whom he addresses. Rich heiresses were married young, often when hardly out of their girlhood, and most frequently without their fancy being consulted. But they seem after marriage to have enjoyed great liberty. Eager for plea sure and greedy of praise, the fair ladies of the castle became the natural patronesses of the mesnie or household of men-at-arms and jongleurs whom their husbands main tained in their castles. Songs of love addressed to them soon became an accepted and almost conventional form of literature ; and, as in social position the authors were generally far below those to whom they directed their amorous plaints, this kind of poetry was always distin guished by great reserve and an essentially respectful style. From the beginning the sentiments, real or assumed, of the poets are expressed in such a refined and guarded style that some historians, overestimating the virtue of the ladies of that time, have been misled to the belief that the love of the troubadour for the mistress of his thoughts was generally platonic and conventional. The conditions under which Romanic poetry arose in the south of France being thus determined as accurately as the scarcity of documents allows, we now proceed to give a survey of the various forms of Provengal literature, chronological order being followed in each instance. By this arrangement the wealth of each form will be better displayed ; and, as it is rare in the south of France for the same person to distinguish himself in more than one of them, there will be generally no occasion to introduce the same author in different sections. Poetry of the Troubadours. Though he was certainly not the creator of the lyric poetry of southern France, William, count of Poitiers, by personally cultivating it gave it a position of honour, and indirectly contributed in a very powerful degree to insure its development and pre- 1 &quot; E lo primo che comencio a dire sicome poeta volgare si mosse peroche voile fare intendere le sue parole a donna alia quale era mala- gevole ad intendere i versi latini.&quot; XIX. no