Romanic Traditional Alba—Between Popular Poetry and Courtly One

This paper initiates a series of texts devoted to genres of love songs that combine the motif of a parting or meeting of lovers at the break of dawn. It is a genological introduction to the classification of Polish poems of this kind from the 16th and 17th centuries (Chapter 1. Introduction. Premises for this cycle of studies). Morning love songs—here referred to as albas or alboradas—appeared at the very beginning of mediaeval Romance lyricism, that is, at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries (Mozarabic kharja). Although they originated from folk ‘women’s songs’, they were soon included in the repertoire of troubadours and incorporated into their genre system. The first study is devoted to works focusing on lovers parting in the morning. It investigates the functioning of this type of lyric on the borderline between the traditional and courtly registers (Chapter 2. Controversy. Folk and learned albas; Chansone de femme and grand chant courtois) and presents a traditional version of alba (Chapter 3. Traditional alba (popular, folk)). The traditional alba is a thematic genre, focused on the scene of lovers parting at dawn. It is distinguished from the courtly alba (the troubadour type) by the important role of nature. The lovers meet outside the city, in natural scenery, and are awakened by the singing of morning birds (there are no guards, spies, or jealous husbands lurking in the background). The classification presented is based mainly on the findings of Pierre Bec, as well as on the research and collection of albas gathered by Toribio Fuente Cornejo. Chapter 3.1. Mozarabic kharja and its derivatives; Romanesque and Latin albas presents the oldest surviving texts, which are refrain-like fragments. Chapter 3.2. The Galician-Portuguese courtly version of traditional alba analyses a type of folk alba adapted to courtly lyricism, illustrated by the example of Nuno Fernandes Torneol’s Levad’amigo. The discussion of these canonical forms of albas is extended with two proposed subtypes. The first is defined as the mixed type—traditional alba with courtly elements (chapter 3.3.) and illustrated by an example of the French alba Entre moi et mon amin. The elements of the setting (meeting in the open air, the role of the bird) come from the traditional form, which is also indicated by the lyrical subject—a woman. On the other hand, the strophic composition and metrics of the poem reveal the influence of courtly poetry. The other mixed type—courtly alba with traditional elements (chapter 3.4.), represented by two Occitan and two French texts, belongs to the fin’amor culture and has the features of the courtly version (types of characters, terminology, formal structure) with the traditional role of nature.

* The article is supported by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland, project: Od paraklausithyronu do serenady, grant no. 2012/07/B/HS2/01297.

The Courtly Alba of Troubadours (Parting at Dawn)

The second in the series of studies devoted to the genre of love songs, which combines the motif of lovers parting or meeting at dawn, presents the most canonical form of the genre, i.e. the courtly alba of the Occitan (Provencal) troubadours. Chapter 1. Courtly alba (knightly, learned, aristocratic) presents the definition of the genre according mainly to Elizabeth Wilson Poe. It then introduces a classification of the varieties of the genre following Christopher Chaguinian’s critical edition (alba de séparation, alba formelle érotique, alba religieux) enriched by the division into two types of mixed albas (presented in the previous paper) that are on the borderline of courtly and traditional forms. Additionally, following Toribio Fuente Cornejo, the collection of Occitan albas is supplemented with French and Galician-Portuguese examples, all created between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 14th century. Chapter 2.1. Traditional alba versus knightly guard song presents—following Chaguinian—a falsification of Alfred Jeanroy’s hypothesis that assumes the existence of an intermediate link between two preserved Latin guard songs from the 10th and 11th centuries and the troubadour alba, indicating the latter’s origin in the traditional form. This hypothesis is corroborated by the oldest definition of the genre in the treatise Doctrina de compondre dictats. Chapter 2.3. The Arabic hypothesis presents the motif of ibtakara (the parting of co-nomadising peoples or the morning parting of lovers from two different peoples), often referred to in Andalusian courtly poetry. The example of Ibn Zaydūn’s qaṣīda (10th/11th century) shows motifs that are intrinsic to the troubadour alba. Chapter 3. Types of Occitan amorous alba. Analysis of texts presents the further varieties of the genre: 3.1. Alba de sépartion (example—Rimbaut de Vaqueiras, Gaita be), 3.1.1. Alba de sépartion, type: a courtly version of chanson de malmariée (Cadenet, S’anc fui belha), 3.2. Alba formelle érotique (Uc de Bacalaria Per grazir).

* The article is supported by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland, project: Od paraklausithyronu do serenady, grant no. 2012/07/B/HS2/01297.

Obscure loqui—Riddles and Their Definitions in Latin Treatises and Handbooks of Poetics in the 16th–18th Centuries Due to the Ancient Tradition

Julian Krzyżanowski’s statement that a riddle is a literary genre standing on the border between literature and language is the best inspiration for the philologist to undertake research on this issue. The article contains considerations on definitions and theory of this popular genre in old literature. It has been mentioned that the most complete theoretical and literary reflection on riddles in the early modern era was conducted by the Italian humanist Lilio Giraldi in his Latin work Libellus, in quo aenigmata pleraque antiquorum explicantur, first published in 1539 in Basel and then again in 1551. Giraldi directed his thoughts first to the Latin definition of the riddle noted by Aulus Gellius. The author of the article points out that scholars do not report the ambiguity of the riddle genre in their research, and in particular they ignore the fact that Gellius caused trouble to humanists when he used the word “scirpus”in his definition. Although in ancient times theoretical reflection on the riddle was not too abundant, the author’s attempt to go through ancient sources in Greek (Aristotle, Plutarch, Athenaeus) allows us to penetrate deeper into the definitions, terminology and semantics of the riddle genre and to consider its function in modern literary theory and practice terms derived from the Greek language, such as: aenigma, griphus, logogriphus. The author of this article emphasises that in contrast to the theoretical ancient reflection, in the treatises on poetics and rhetoric created in the Renaissance, and above all in the Baroque, including the works of the Jesuits, one can find numerous extensive remarks about riddles which were eagerly practised at that time. An example of the vivid interest in this subject matter is the Latin manuscript discussed briefly in the article. The text was written in the first half of the 18th century and contains, inter alia, notes on the theory of poetry. Among the issues enclosed in this manuscript textbook, much space is devoted to riddles. Despite the terminological ambiguity of the riddle genre and the equivocality of definitions, which were carefully noted by the authors of the theoretical treatises, in the conclusion of this article the author emphasises the extraordinary popularity that various forms of riddles enjoyed in literary practice in the 16th–18th centuries.

Traditional and Courtly Alba: A Selection of Romance Lyrics Translated by Magdalena Pabisiak

A selection of mediaeval Romance lyrics complementing the two previous studies published in this issue of Terminus. It presents the first Polish translations of a number of works classified as traditional and courtly albas. The translations were made from five mediaeval Romance languages and Latin. The works whose authors are known are provided with a biographical note. Additionally, a historical and literary perspective for the presented collection is outlined. It also discusses some terms of fin’amor poetry that are difficult in translation. A comprehensive introduction gives information on the intentions of the authors of this collection, the translation technique developed here, and the specifics of translating Romance lyric into Polish. The three troubadour albas (Rimbaut de Vaqueiras, Cadenet, Uc de Bacalaria) examined here illustrate the translation strategies developed by Magdalena Pabisiak, presenting different variants of the translated text and criteria for making particular choices in the translation. Difficulties related to recreating the metric system of Romance lyric in a language with different prosody, syntactic structures, length of words, and vowel frequency are discussed, showing, inter alia, how difficult it is to obtain in Polish the same repeatability of rhymes so characteristic for this type of lyric.

* The article is supported by the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland, project: Od paraklausithyronu do serenady, grant no. 2012/07/B/HS2/01297.