Troubador Quotation in the Occitan Tradition

This book examines the significance of quotations from troubadour poetry within other works composed in the troubadours' language, medieval Occitan. Whereas in Northern France, troubadour songs are typically quoted as expressions of sentiment or to enliven courtly gatherings, and stand apart from the works that quote them (for example, they are often sung whereas the rest of the work is narrated), Occitan authors mine the troubadours for their wisdom and represent their songs as forerunners or exemplars of their own didacticism. The quotations function, in short, as expressions of knowledge: both the knowledge encapsulated in the quotation, and the knowledge of the quotation that is exhibited by the writer (and his audience). The kinds of knowledge found in lyric poetry range from understanding the mechanisms of love, and the faults or virtues to which it exposes people, to insight into the truths of philosophy and into God's ultimate purpose for his creation. In this wide-ranging book, Sarah Kay discusses texts dating from the very beginning of the thirteenth century to the mid-fourteenth, which include short stories, treatises, and an encyclopaedia. Although all in Occitan many were composed by non- Occitan speakers and outside the Occitan-speaking area, in Iberia or Italy, where they had a major influence on the future development of European poetry - notably in the work of Dante and Petrarch. (Legenda, Research Monographs in French Studies, Maney Publishing 2010).