Transcript DIVINE AND COURTLY LOVE IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN

DIVINE AND COURTLY
LOVE IN MEDIEVAL
SPAIN
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
ORIGINS OF SPANISH LOVE
POETRY
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First known poems: jarchas (kharjas)
from Xth-XIth centuries, discovered in a
Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt.
They were written in Arabic or Mozarabic
and consisted of the final 3 or 4 lines of
Muwashshas (romantic odes).
The Mozarabic (Christian) ones mostly
contain laments of lower class women
about their absent lovers (Habib).
A Kharja by Yehuda Halevi
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Vayse neu corachon de mib
Ya Rab si me tornarad?
Tan mal meu doler li-l-habib!
Enfermo yed cuand sanarad?
Many are written in “Aljemiado”, Romance
language in Arabic script.Some Muslim
authors refer to them as “songs in the
Christian style”.
Antecedents:
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The Song of Songs in the Bible.
Arabic Classical (Yemeni and Hijazi) and Andalusi
poetry:
Ibn Hazm (Abenhazam) from Cordoba (XIth
century), philosopher, jurist and analyst of ‘Ishq”
(hopeless, mad passion) in “Tawq al Hamama”
(Ring of the Dove).
Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) from Murcia: towering
mystic, author of many ghazals and of “Tarjuman
al Ashwaq” (Interpreter of Desires) who gives a
mystical interpretation to love verses
Graeco-Roman Neo-Platonism, translated and
commented by Arab authors in Sicily and Spain.
Appearance of the Joglars and
Trobadors in Southern Europe
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Wandering jugglers recited and sang the poems composed by
Trobadores, whose name may have come from Arabic “Tariba”.
Trobadors as such appear in the late XIIIth century.
Trobar Clus: a sophisticated and obscure symbolic, coded
language.
Trobar Leu: a lighter, more popular style.
Many categories were invented: trova cara, oscura, sutil, delgada,
cubierta o cerrada (en Argot o “ars gotica”), rica.
The themes were almost all related to love but in many genres:
Ennuy, Placer, Salut d’amor, Somni, Escondit, Descort...Each one
related to a specific season and time of the day.
Some frequent forms were the Canso (a love ballad which begins
with a celebration of spring), the Alba, the Pastorella (love story
between a knight and a shepherdess) and the Serranilla, related
to Galician and early Portuguese Cantigas de Amiga.
In Spain a favourite format was the “cuaderna via” consisting in
4-line stanzas. In Provencal, the most common metre is
decasyllabic in 8 verse strophes.
The Rules of Courtly Love
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Those rules developed gradually and were recorded by Mesters of Jogleria and in
compendia such as the Breviari d’Amor, the Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Alfonso
El Sabio and the Libro del Buen Amor of Juan Ruiz.
In parallel were the Mesters of Clerecia who codified religious, mystical poetry.
The source was Southern France, the cradle of Occitanian or Provencal literature
which inspired the Iberic and Northern Italian Romance poets all the way to the
Renaissance, from Fray Luis de Leon to Dante and Petrarch.
The pole star of the courtly trobador was ‘Midons” (my Lady), an idealized woman
endowed with all perfections and generally married to a powerful lord.
The woman’s identity must be protected so that she is only alluded to by a “Senhal”
or Sign which only she and poet know, at the end of the strophe: Tornada.
The is at once a feudal mistress and a mystical, sacred icon,
Her husband, the “gilos” is ritually warned by “lausengiers” (accusers) that she has a
secret admirer.
The lover is possessed by this “foll amor” which often remains virginal and idealized
(Platonic). It is for him a devotional religion which ennobles him and for which he
consents to all sacrifices.
Trobadors were in general scholarly. They had studied the seven sciences of Medieval
learning: the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arthmetics,
geometry, music, astronomy) related to the seven theologal and cardinal virtues.
The Stages in Amorous Progres
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The poet is first a supplicant (fenhedor).
When he is noticed by the Lady he becomes a
precador.
Then, when accepted by her, he is Entendedor, as
he becomes privy to her thoughts and feelings.
.The last stage is that of lover (drut) which may
or may not lead to physical union.
Throughout, the poet must observe mesura,
discretion or secrecy as he can never compromise
his lady’s reputation or sully her name.
That love is seen as a state of grace, akin to
religious bliss.
Some examples
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The philosophy of Courtly Love, inspired by the mystical
experience, turns upside down the social order in which the
woman is subservient to the man and must accept her
designated husband. She becomes the embodiment of
Divinity in the secular sphere.
There are two sorts of “Albas”: in the erotic genre, the poet
dreads and deplores the return of the day which puts an
end to a night of love. In the religious alba, the dawn is
hailed as a bearer of the divine light which spells an end to
the darkness, confusion, fears and temptations of the night.
There is an ascetic rejection of carnal desires and sinful
indulgence which breed misery. That conclusion is
expressed by many trobadors, echoing Ibn Hazm’s own
admonitions at the end of the Ring of the Dove.
Here is an example of an amorous Alba. The
guaita is the watcher who protects the
v
clandestine dalliance from intruders.
Quan lo rosinhols escria
ab sa part le rueg e-l dia,
Yeu suy ab ma bell’amia
jos la flor
Fro la gaita de la tor
escria: Drutz, al levar!
The Pastorella, a kind of idyll
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The pastorella is about a knight
seeking to seduce a shepherdess in a
very polite and poetic language. The
usual response from the girl is a
reasoned refusal, even when she has
initially accepted. The moral
message is that a woman stands to
lose too much if she succumbs to the
advances of a man of higher birth
and station. The man must accept
Excerpt from a Pastorella by
Cerveri de Gerona
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Na toza, joys no m’agrada
N jazers de femna irade.
S’agues joy, e vos marrimen,
Na fora cauza d’avinen
Mas era.m deu esser dada.
Pastora: Seyner, caus’es desquiada
Per forc’ab, cutx’autreyada.
No-s deu far, per qu’eu m’en repen;
-Pero vuyll m’auzir jutyamen
De l’Enfan, on pretz s’agrada.
A la Vezcomtesa plazen,
Na toza, de Cardona us ren,
C’amor note pro, forcada.
Legacy of Trobador Poetry
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The amorous and mystical poetry of the Trobadors and the
Northern European Minstrels and Minnesingers inspired and
shaped the literature of the Renaissance, in its secular and
religious dimensions.
In Spain, Ausias March, Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Jorge
Manrique and Garcilaso de la Vega were among its most
eminent successors and Cervantes was both a follower and
a satirist of that tradition.
We find many references to Medieval “Loci” and themes in
Shakespeare’s works as in many other great writers of the
Classical Age of Europe. The Romantics rediscovered
Troubadour literature and revived it in a quaint, often
“pre_Raphaelite” style.