Occitan Literature - Narrative Poetry

Narrative Poetry

Although the strictly lyric poetry of the troubadours forms the most original part of Occitan literature, it must not be supposed that the remainder is of trifling importance. Narrative poetry, especially, received in Occitania a great development, and, thanks to recent discoveries, a considerable body of it has already become known. Several classes must be distinguished: the chanson de geste, legendary or apparently historical, the romance of adventure and the novel. France remains emphatically the native country of the chanson de geste; but, although in the south different social conditions, a more delicate taste, and a higher state of civilization prevented a similar profusion of tales of war and heroic deeds, Occitan literature has some highly important specimens of this class.

The first place belongs to Girart de Roussillon, a poem of ten thousand verses, which relates the struggles of Charles Martel with his powerful vassal the Burgundian Gerard of Roussillon. It is a literary production of rare excellence and of exceptional interest for the history of civilization in the 11th and 12th centuries. Girart de Roussillon belongs only within certain limits to the Occitan literature. The recension which we possess appears to have been made on the borders of Limousin and Poitou; but it is clearly no more than a recast of an older poem no longer extant, probably either of French or at least Burgundian origin.

To Limousin also seems to belong the poem of Aigar and Maurin (end of the 12th century), of which we have unfortunately only a fragment so short that the subject cannot be clearly made out. Of less heroic character is the poem of Daurel and Beton (first half of the 13th century), connected with the cycle of Charlemagne, but by the romantic character of the events more like a regular romance of adventure. We cannot, however, form a complete judgment in regard to it, as the only manuscript in which it has been preserved is defective at the close, and that to an amount there is no means of ascertaining. Midway between legend and history may be classified the Occitan Cansó d'Antioca, a mere fragment of which, 700 verses - in extent, has been recovered in Madrid and published in Archives de l'Orient latin, vol. ii. This poem, which seems to have been composed by a certain Gregoire Bechada, mentioned in a 12th-century chronicle and written in Limousin (see G. Paris, in Romania, xxii. 358), is one of the sources of the Spanish compilation La gran conquista de Ultramar. To history proper belongs the Song of the Albigensian Crusade, which, in its present state, is composed of two poems one tacked to the other: the first, containing the events from the beginning of the crusade till 1213, is the work of a cleric named William of Tudela, a moderate supporter of the crusaders; the second, from 1213 to 1218, is by a vehement opponent of the enterprise. The language and style of the two parts are no less different than the opinions. Finally, about 1280, Guillaume Anelier, a native of Toulouse, composed, in the chanson de geste form, a poem on the war carried on in Navarre by the French in 1276 and 1277. It is an historical work of little literary merit. All these poems are in the form of chansons de geste, viz, in stanzas of indefinite length, with a single rhyme.

Gerard of Roussillon, Aigar and Maurin and Daurel and Beton are in verses of ten, the others in verses of twelve syllables. The peculiarity of the versification in Gerard is that the pause in the line occurs after the sixth syllable, and not, as is usual, after the fourth.

Like the chanson de geste, the romance of adventure is but slightly represented in the south; but it is to be borne in mind that many works of this class must have perished, as is rendered evident by the mere fact that, with few exceptions, the narrative poems which have come down to us are each known by a single manuscript only. We possess but three Provençal romances of adventure:

Jaufri (composed in the middle of the 13th century and dedicated to a king of Aragon, possibly James I), Blandin of Cornwall and Guillem de La Barra. The first two are connected with the Arthurian cycle: Jaufri is an elegant and ingenious work; Blandin of Cornwall the dullest and most insipid one can well imagine. The romance of Guillem de La Barra tells a strange story also found in Boccaccio's Decameron (2nd Day, viii.). It is rather a poor poem; but as a contribution to literary history it has the advantage of being dated. It was finished in 1318, and is dedicated to a noble of Languedoc called Sicart de Montaut.

Connected with the romance of adventure is the novel (in Occitan novas, always in the plural), which is originally an account of an event newly happened. The novel must have been at first in the south what, as we see by the Decameron, it was in Italy, a society pastime with the wits in turn relating anecdotes, true or imaginary, which they think likely to amuse their auditors. But before long this kind of production was treated in verse, the form adopted being that of the romances of adventure octosyllabic verses rhyming in pairs. Some of those novels which have come down to us may be ranked with the most graceful works in Provençal literature; two are from the pen of the Catalan author Raimon Vidal de Besalu. One, the Castia-gilos (the Chastisement of the Jealous Man), is a treatment, not easily matched for elegance, of a frequently-handled theme the story of the husband who, in order to entrap his wife, takes the disguise of the lover whom she is expecting and receives with satisfaction blows intended, as he thinks, for him whose part he is playing; the other, The Judgment of Love, is the recital of a question of the law of love, departing considerably from the subjects usually treated in the novels. Mention may also be made of the novel of The Parrot by Arnaut de Carcassonne, in which the principal character is a parrot of great eloquence and ability, who succeeds marvellously in securing the success of the amorous enterprises of his master.

Novels came to be extended to the proportions of a long romance. Flamenca, which belongs to the novel type, has still over eight thousand verses, though the only MS. of it has lost some leaves both at the beginning and at the end. This poem, composed in all probability in 1234, is the story of a lady who by very ingenious devices, not unlike those employed in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus, succeeds in eluding the vigilance of her jealous husband. No analysis can be given here of a work the action of which is highly complicated; suffice it to remark that there is no book in medieval literature which betokens so much quickness of intellect and is so instructive in regard to the manners and usages of polite society in the 13th century. We know that novels were in great favor in the south of France, although the specimens preserved are not very numerous. Statements made by Francesco da Barberino (early part of 14th century), and recently brought to light, give us a glimpse of several works of this class which have been lost. From the Occitan territories the novel spread into Catalonia, where we find in the 14th century a number of novels in verse very similar to the Provençal ones, and into Italy, where in general the prose form has been adopted.