Parrots and nightingales : troubadour quotations and the development of European poetry / Sarah Kay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kay, Sarah.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Provençal literature--History and criticism.

Provençal literature.

Troubadour songs--History and criticism.

Troubadour songs.

Quotations in literature--History and criticism.

Quotations in literature.

European poetry--Provençal influences--History and criticism.

European poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (473 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The love songs of Occitan troubadours inspired a rich body of courtly lyric by poets working in neighboring languages. For Sarah Kay, these poets were nightingales, composing verse that is recognizable yet original. But troubadour poetry also circulated across Europe in a form that is less well known but was more transformative. Writers outside Occitania "ed troubadour songs word for word in their original language, then commented upon these excerpts as linguistic or poetic examples, as guides to conduct, and even as sources of theological insight. If troubadours and their poetic imitators were nightingales, these "ation artists were parrots, and their practices of excerption and repetition brought about changes in poetic subjectivity that would deeply affect the European canon. The first sustained study of the medieval tradition of troubadour "ation, Parrots and Nightingales examines texts produced along the arc of the northern Mediterranean—from Catalonia through southern France to northern Italy—through the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth. Featuring extensive appendices of over a thousand troubadour passages that have been "ed or anthologized, Parrots and Nightingales traces how "ations influenced the works of grammarians, short story writers, biographers, encyclopedists, and not least, other poets including Dante and Petrarch. Kay explores the instability and fluidity of medieval textuality, revealing how the art of "ation affected the transmission of knowledge and transformed perceptions of desire from the "courtly love" of the Middle Ages to the more learned formulations that emerged in the Renaissance. Parrots and Nightingales deftly restores the medieval tradition of lyric "ation to visibility, persuasively arguing for its originality and influence as a literary strategy.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Note on References, Translations, and Abbreviations

Introduction: Quotation, Knowledge, Change

Chapter 1. Rhyme and Reason: Quotation in Raimon Vidal de Besalú’s Razos de trobar and the Grammars of the Vidal Tradition

Chapter 2. Quotation, Memory, and Connoisseurship in the Novas of Raimon Vidal de Besalú

Chapter 3. Starting Afresh with Quotation in the Vidas and Razos

Chapter 4. Soliciting Quotation in Florilegia: Attribution, Authority, and Freedom

Chapter 5. The Nightingales’ Way: Poetry as French Song in Jean Renart’s Guillaume de Dole

Chapter 6. The Parrots’ Way: The Novas del papagai from Catalonia to Italy

Chapter 7. Songs Within Songs: Subjectivity and Performance in Bertolome Zorzi (74.9) and Jofre de Foixà (304.1)

Chapter 8. Perilous Quotations: Language, Desire, and Knowledge in Matfre Ermengau’s Breviari d’amor

Chapter 9. Dante’s Ex- Appropriation of the Troubadours in De vulgari eloquentia and the Divina commedia

Chapter 10. The Leys d’amors: Phasing Out the antics troubadors and Ushering in the New Toulousain Poetics

Chapter 11. Petrarch’s “Lasso me”: Changing the Subject

Conclusion

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography of Printed and Electronic Sources

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from title page (ebrary, viewed September 3, 2013).

ISBN:

9780812208382

0812208382

OCLC:

857645993