The evolution of the Lyric Insertion in Thirteenth-Century Narrative
Christopher Callahan
The early thirteenth century witnessed the appearance, with Jean Renart's Roman de la Rose, also known as the Roman de Guillaume de Dole, of a new, hybrid discourse, that of narrative verse interspersed with lyric passages. This device was extremely popular; Renart's Rose had more than seventy imitators, and lyrico-narrative discourse flourished until the early fifteenth century, enjoying its apogee in the works of Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart. High courtly lyric, the expression of the first literate generation of aristocratic poets, had flourished for over a century, and its appropriation in the 1220's by narrative signals an important milestone in the evolution of both lyric and narrative.
Narrative is largely a product of non-courtly, clerkly writers, and the forging of a complex, new poetics at the hands of those writers in thirteenth-century France was made possible by the flourishing of a money economy and the passing of true economic power into the hands of the burgeoning middle class.
This change in status began to make accessible to wealthy burghers the literary and moral codes of the nobility. Even the knight errant of twelfth-century romance is more likely an image, albeit ennobled, of the traveling merchant, than an accurate portrait of contemporary knighthood (Vance, 1986, p. 123). The practice, even in the time of Count Henry the Liberal of Champagne, of using non-aristocratic militias to defend urban centers--each wealthy citizen was required to possess crossbow and breastplate (Contamine, 1980, p. 165)--gives a very true ring to the tone of nostalgia which subtends all of Chretien's romances.
As clerkly writers appropriated the forms of lyric discourse, they were able, or felt impelled, to resolve its fundamental stasis, which I propose they found unsatisfying, by creating a form in which the drama potentially present in lyric could be played out in narrative (Zumthor, 1980, pp. 39-55; Vance, 1986, pp. 101-110). It is the intention of this paper to examine four narratives from throughout the
Three of the works I will discuss, Le Roman de la rose, Le Roman de castelain de Couci and Dante's Vita nuova, show very clearly the progressive effects of these two forces as one moves chronologically from the Rose to the Vita nuova. The fourth, Aucassin et Nicolette, shows, in its theatrical setting, a unique pattern of interplay between lyric and narrative, as well as an unusual, parodic treatment of the traditional courtly hero.
The Roman de la Rose dates from the 1220s and is a milestone in the growth of lyric compilation. It contains, woven into its story, forty-six songs or fragments of songs, representing the genres popular among cultured audiences of the day. We find trouvere and troubadour pieces and one chanson de geste as well as more popular forms such as pastourelles, dancing songs, and chansons de toile. Through the variety and arrangement of its lyric selections, the Rose is strikingly similar to the earliest trouvere chansonniers, and bespeaks similar notions regarding authorship and the role of the book. Although the earliest trouvere anthologies do not appear until the 1260s, they and Rose reflect a common tradition which sets them visibly apart from the manuscripts which follow them.
The single manuscript of the Rose, though dating from the late thirteenth century, is not elaborately decorated. Written in an elegant hand and marking stanzas with large initials, it does not, however, contain either miniatures or music. Moreover, the majority of the lyric compositions it contains are anonymous, although their authors must have been known to contemporary listeners. In its relative simplicity as well as the variety of its program, this manuscript, Vatican Reg. 1725, is reminiscent of the Chansonnier de St. Germain des Pres, the earliest surviving trouvere codex, while in the presentation of that program, it recalls trouvere chansonniers O and C, which arrange their contents alphabetically rather than by author, and which contain music only sporadically. These characteristics suggest a very early stage in the growth of consciousness of the book as an art object to be enjoyed for its own sake. Indeed, the collecting of lyric poetry in a visually pleasing format develops fully only in the decades following ms. U. Hypotheses that the more rudimentary chansonniers functioned as records of performance rather than as aristocratic collector Volumes (Van der Werf, 1972, P. 28;
The Rose presents a portrait of courtly life in which song and dance appear as a spontaneous expression of aristocratic values. We observe the German emperor Conrad and his court at tournaments and festivals, trysting in pastoral settings and suffering the pangs of love. They entertain themselves and each other at all times with appropriate songs and dances, and the ideal of the noble courtier as skilled in arms, in love, and in song is so freshly portrayed that the usual nostalgia for the perfect courtliness of some bygone era is nearly absent. What comes across as genuine in this only slightly anachronistic depiction of the court is the essential orality of this culture. Despite the paradox that this performance-oriented portrayal of lyric practices is presented in writing, and the author is aware of the need to preserve courtly song for future generations, we can readily place the action of the story in the late twelfth century, as the role call of real figures from that period indicates.
On two occasions, letters are written and sent by messenger. When Guillaume de Dole is first summoned to Conrad's court, the messenger is appraised of the contents of the letter he is to deliver, and then after reading the letter to Guillaume, he summarizes its contents, as if the first reading were not sufficient!1 In neither case, moreover, does the sender write the letter himself, but rather has recourse to a trained clerk. Even then, the precise wording of the message is left up to the discretion of the scribe.
There is also a humorous passage, after the imperial messenger has arrived at Dole, in which Guillaume's men stand around gawking at the emperor's seal (w. 987-990):
We do not learn until five lines later, in a rather off-handed manner, that the seal is made of gold, a fact which could well justify the curiosity of Guillaume's men. I would nonetheless suggest that the narrative is hearkening back to a recent past when seals were not common. Like heraldry, the widespread use of seals was a twelfth-century development and is a sign of the authority of texts. The legalistic Henri Plantagenet of England was the first monarch to insist that minor noblemen and even literate burghers cast seals (Stock,
That this transitional period of the late twelfth-century is accurately depicted can also be seen in the attitudes of the nobility toward the merchant and peasant classes. In his introduction, Renart insists that rustics can understand nothing of courtly lyric. It is a dosed system whose values are not accessible to outsiders; even the feelings it describes are knowable only to members of the nobility. The emperor Conrad is praised, furthermore, for never granting offices or lands to non-nobles. There is no question, however, who holds the purse strings in Conrad's world. We are told that he does not burden the burghers and peasants with taxes, as he can then expect that they will provide him with anything he asks. The knights all lodge with rich burghers while tourneying, and Guillaume obtains a loan for 120 lances, replete with silk banners, and for three shields with silk brocade straps, from a wealthy merchant of Liege who customarily extends him credit. The nobility lives off of the spoils of war and off the generosity of the merchant class. They are so indispensable that we see Conrad zealously protecting all traveling merchants from brigands and granting sumptuous presents to the losers of a tournament so as to prevent pillage of the burghers' houses.
Merchants are essential, but excluded, from the cult of fin'amor as well as from other privileges (Lopez, 1976, pp. 123-146). The enjoyment of courtly lyric in this romance is an unabashedly joyous celebration of the nobility's own greatness, and we witness lyric poetry performed in such a way that the line between performers and audience is completely blurred. The resemblance between the Rose and modern musical theatre is striking, with the difference that in the Rose, the outbursts of song and dance seem entirely natural. It is this spontaneity which also characterizes the alternations between narrative and lyric. The lyric interludes are always directly pertinent to the development of the plot. Songs have a dual function when they show the courtiers entertaining themselves but at the same time reflect and underscore what has just occurred. Songs are used to console others; they are also used cathartically by the grieving lovers themselves. They serve as asides to develop a character, as when the Geste de Fromont is performed before Conrad, underscoring his role as renderer of justice and peacemaker between rival vassals. The songs serve, finally, to foreshadow what is to come, and to help propel the narrative events toward their fulfillment. The story of Belle Aiglentine, made pregnant by Count Henry, prefigures the false accusation of adultery made by the seneschal against
The interplay between lyric and narrative in this work admirably illustrates Paul Zumthor's model of lyric as latent narrative (1980, pp. 39-55). The stock lyric characters of lover, lady and medisant, or slanderer, even the implied lyric audience, are present in the narrative, and they permit the static roles of singer-lover, beloved, and enemy of true love to be fleshed out. The tension between these three characters, inherently unresolvable in lyric, is resolved in the narrative with the revealing of the lie, the marriage of Conrad and Lienor, and the banishment of the seneschal.
The crystallization of nobility as a hereditary privilege had made finding a proper spouse essential to the continuation of the blood line. As a consequence of this evolution, marriage became sacramentalized during the twelfth century (Le Bras, 1953, dictionary article entitled "mariage"; Vance, 1986, p. 118). The traditional triangle of fin'amor had no mechanism for valorizing marriage, although Chretien de Troyes had already dealt effectively with this question at the narrative level. Just such a mechanism is offered in this romance by the incorporation of lyric into the narrative, and it is likely that the solution to the problem of marriage and the lyric triangle which this lyrical-narrative hybrid makes available was instrumental in the development of this form of discourse.
Lyric insertions continue to be popular for another two centuries, as stated earlier, yet the relation between lyric and narrative did not remain fixed. The late thirteenth century Roman du castelain de Couci comes down to us in two manuscripts dating from the first half of the fourteenth-century. It recounts the tragic love of an extremely popular late twelfth-century trouvere and crusader, known in the chansonniers simply as the Chatelain de Couci. Couci, who is named Renaud in the romance, loves and woos a married lady, the Dame de Faiel. He then composes his songs to her: to win her favor, to bemoan her cruelty to him or rejoice in her indulgence, and to sing of the upcoming crusade, on which he dies.
The number of lyric compositions is considerably fewer in this romance than in the Rose. There are seven pieces attributed to the chatelain as well as three rondeaux sung by others at festive gatherings. There are in addition two songs mentioned in the narrative, but then not transcribed. As these do not occur in either manuscript, it is permitted to conjecture that they were not written out in the manuscripts' source, perhaps intentionally so (see Matzke and Delbouille's critical edition, p.. LXIV).
In addition to the great disparity in the number of songs included here and in the Rose, we find that Couci's songs are only marginally appropriate to the context in which they are placed. In a sense, they function independently of the narrative, and could be omitted without altering the narrative in any significant way. This is because the lyric insertions in Couci serve a very different purpose than those in the Rose, a purpose which has been shaped by a more literate public. Couci is the first author-generated corpus we find in Old French literature: we observe the composition of each poem in response to a specific event in the author's life. Paradoxically, this fact subordinates the narrative to the lyric, as the primary purpose of the narrative events then becomes the justification of the songs. That this is the author's intention becomes manifest when we note that the lyric portions are literally woven into the narrative: the last line of narrative verse before a song rhymes with the first line of lyric verse. The songs, then, cannot be omitted without disrupting the rhyme scheme of the poem.
This kind of artifice bespeaks a much more literate world, in which the spontaneity of the Rose has given way to a different conception of lyric performance. We always observe Couci composing his songs in solitary moments, singing them to himself as he travels to and from Faiel. Although rondeaux are sung on two occasions, only once is there mention of a song of Couci's being circulated by a minstrel, and we never witness any performance of high courtly lyric before a notable gathering. When minstrels do call at noblemen's houses, moreover, they are plied for all the latest news, but are not asked to perform.2
In its focus on composition rather than performance, we are witnessing the adaptation of the lyric insertion to a new poetics of writing. Indeed, texts of all kinds, monumental as well as written (cf. the reliquary in which Couci sends his embalmed heart to his lady after his death, along with an explanatory letter) have taken precedence over recitation as a means of transmitting knowledge. With respect to the lyric insertions in both the Rose and Couci, Sylvia Huot says that the former 'reflects a knowledge of the lyric tradition as a diverse body of songs,... identified in terms of ... performance ...' whereas the latter 'suggests a knowledge of the lyric tradition derived, at least in part, from a reading of chansonniers.' (Huot, 1987, p. 134.
The social commentary which permeates the Rose is also absent from Couci, as the latter hearkens back to a distant generation, and such realism is not appropriate in an idealized portrait of chivalry.
The conception of the true nobleman had long hinged on the twofold standard of military might and refined love, "d'armes et d'amors" (v. 24) as Renart states. The Rose accords the greater value, as do other contemporary works, to love: "Grand chose est d'amer par amors, que l'en en est plus fins cortois." (w. 1609-1610). What has changed by the time we come to the Roman du castelain de Couci is that not only the practice of fin'amor, but also the practice of the poetics of fin'amor can ennoble a person. The ability to understand refined love and to achieve refined standards of behavior is as accessible to the good poet and singer as to the noble lover, as to sing of love enables one to participate in its subtleties, and courtly circles are by implication open to non-aristocratic participants.
The Vita nuova represents a terminus ad quem for the developments observed in Couci Whereas the story of Couci and his lady was rather artificially bent to those poems attributed to Couci, and constituted a very moving tale quite apart from them, the narrative passages in the Vita nuova, which are in prose, exist solely as a framework, a dramatic context created after the fact, to justify the lyric passages. The work is divided into forty-two sections, of which thirty-one contain poems. The prose frame of each poem not only offers a fictionalized account of the genesis of the sonnet or canzona it contains, but also provides an explication of it.
In acting both as lyric author and as critic of his own work, Dante is effectively divesting lyric of its social and political dimensions. The lyric voice is no longer spokesman for a class ideology, disseminating publicly. It has become introspective and intensely personal. It is grappling, moreover, with the very language of courtly discourse, and this experiment requires some explanation to its audience, hence the explication de texte. This audience, moreover, is a group of male poets among whom Dante's poems are circulated in written form.
We find in Dante the questions regarding the true nature of nobility which occupied others of the day, and which were already broached in the introduction to the Roman de Couci Dante's conclusions that nobility must be a function of personal rather than inherited traits betray a certain political timeliness. He has always considered the early thirteenth-century court of Frederick II in Sicily as a model
Also, the object of Dante's love interest, Beatrice, died in 1290, after many of the sonnets had been composed, and some two years before he began collecting these into the Vita nuova. He felt unable to sustain courtly discourse in the face of this loss, and was consumed by the need to find a language suitable for addressing the dead Beatrice. His effort to turn courtly poetics into a metaphysical quest, to create a new language capable of mediating spiritual desire, will not come to fruition until the Paradiso. At the end of the Vita Nuova, he has failed to push this discourse beyond its limits, and when he does so later, it is by equating gentilezza with grace and praise of Beatrice with praise of Christ. As praise of Christ is a means by which we return to God, the language of courtly lyric with which he addresses Beatrice becomes a metaphor for the road to salvation. We are thus far removed from the courtly discourse of the late twelfth century, having lived through political upheaval, a multifaceted sociological revolution of which the spread of literacy is only one aspect, and the Inquisition.3 We can legitimately ask, from the point of view of Dante's contemporaries, where do we go from here? Have we not exhausted the possibilities of this particular discourse?
Rather than answer that question at this moment, I would like to turn to the last work which I will discuss, Aucassin et Nicolette. This work deserves mention if only for the singularity of its approach to the mixing of lyric and narrative forms. Aucassin et Nicolette is a theatrical piece in which spoken and sung portions alternate regularly, and both narration and dialogue are found in each. The manuscript contains music for all of the lyric segments; the same melody is used throughout the play.
In this chantefable, as its author calls it, there is no break between lyric and narrative such as is traditionally found. Rather than using songs to buttress the plot or as theatrical events to entertain the performers themselves, Aucassin tells a story in both song and spoken verse, and the plot continues throughout the alternations between recitation and singing. While the Rose resembles modern musicals, Aucassin is more reminiscent of very early opera.
By virtue of the fact that song is used as a medium to recount the plot, the poetic function of the lover-knight is minimalized. Both Aucassin and Nicolette sing, but do not make songs of a courtly nature, and are thus deprived of a vehicle for expressing courtly values. These seem, in fact, to have been turned on their head. Love for Nicolette does not make Aucassin a more valiant warrior. As he rides into battle as a result of a mendacious agreement with his father, Aucassin is so distracted by thoughts of his love that he lets himself be captured. Only then does he come out of his stupor and fight valorously, but to no avail. Later in the play, his sense of knightly values is again awakened by the ludicrous customs of the kingdom of Torelore, whose king lies in childbed, and for whose people war is a massive food fight. When Aucassin beats the king for his absurdity and then rides against the king's enemies and actually kills some of them, he is severely reprimanded for his excesses. With the exception of these two occasions, Aucassin is quite a peaceable young man in whom we fail to find the traditional lyric topos of love and war as manifestations of a single erotic desire. He is quite consistent, rather, in being a bad warrior, an inept lover, in that he is forever losing track of his beloved, and not a singer in the courtly sense at all.
In two instances, we do find traditional lyric characters in the narrative, though they do not act as realizations of latent elements expressed elsewhere. Count Garin, Aucassin's father, makes his son a promise that he may have a kiss from Nicolette if he rides into battle against the Count of Valence. This promise is not Garin's to make, nor does he intend to keep it. By working to confound the lovers, Garin acts as a medisant, and he effectively keeps them apart until after his death. Secondly, in a scene reminiscent of a Provencal aubade, Nicolette is warned in song by a watchman of an approaching posse sent by Garin to arrest her. This is one of the few moving scenes in an otherwise lighthearted, topsy-turvy portrait of courtly society.
The true tone of the work is set in scenes such as that where Aucassin is scolded by a peasant for weeping over such trifles as a lost dog. That the dog in question is Nicolette is not really surprising, as Nicolette has already spoken of herself, when addressing a group of shepherds, as a quarry for which Aucassin would pay a high price. These same shepherds then sing of their encounter with Nicolette in a mockery of courtly lyric, but when overheard and confronted by Aucassin, they refuse to repeat their song. They do consent, however, to repeat their tale prosaically, thereby tacitly admitting that lyric is not an appropriate medium for the low-born (Vance, 1986, pp. 171-173).
This jocular portrait of contemporary mores is sprinkled with literary references familiar to audiences of the day. Nicolette's warning from the watchman, which we have already mentioned, is an accurate theatricalization of an aubade. Aucassin and Nicolette's reunion in the bower, furthermore, is strongly suggestive of Tristan and Iseut's exile in the forest, and Aucassin's encounter with the cowherd is taken straight from Chretien's Yvain. We are thus invited to laugh along with the thirteenth-century public at what can only be a mockery of courtly values. Not only is the courtly singer-lover-warrior turned to ridicule and his chosen discourse misappropriated by shepherds, but the audience is privy to a number of literary jokes made on the great romances.
Aucassin et Nicolette thus carries us as far from the world of Rose as does the Vita nuova but in a very different direction, and much earlier. It is actually a very refreshing look at a society which a strict diet of courtly romances can easily lead one to take too seriously. The change from an oral to a text-based poetics, the subjection of erotic desire to spiritual paradigms, and the radical alteration of the social context which gave rise to courtly lyric did not, of course, bring about the demise of lyric poetry. Textual models inspired by the original twelfth-century paradigms continued to inform codes of chivalry into the 19th-century with little alteration.4 Furthermore, literacy, and in modern times, printing, have not eradicated orality as a mode of dissemination. Both of these forces are active even in the most literate cultures, and they interact in complex ways. We are nonetheless able to recognize the growth of literacy as one of the factors instrumental in the development of lyrical narrative discourse in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The evolution observed can be traced to a number of extra-textual influences, which are directly measurable.