In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Song Personified:The Tornadas of Raimon de Miraval
  • Anne Adele Levitsky

In the second tornada of his song "Aissi cum es genser pascors," Raimon de Miraval addresses the song he has just finished singing:

Al rei d'Aragon vai de corsCansos dire q'el salutE sai tant sobr'altre drutQe·ls paucs prez faz semblar granz E·ls rics faz valer dos tanz.1

[Go quickly, song, to tell the king of Aragon that I salute him, and that I am so superior in knowledge to another lover that I make insignificant merits seem important and important ones twice as valuable.]

Raimon, who composed in the second half of the twelfth century and into the beginning of the thirteenth century, sends the song as his messenger to the king of Aragon. Raimon thereby imbues his song with speech, mobility, and agency, human characteristics that transform the song from what seems like an outward expression of Raimon's inner feelings to a personified entity in itself. Through the enactment of its tornada (a half-stanza that occurs at the end of troubadour songs) the song moves out of Raimon's body via his singing voice toward a second figure (that of his patron).

Much scholarship exists on the troubadour lyric corpus, thanks to its status as the earliest such corpus in a Romance language; it provides insight into the roles men and women played in Occitan courtly society, and marks the beginning of a tradition of romantic secular lyric poetry that continues in later contexts. Scholars in musicology and comparative literature alike have produced [End Page 17] comprehensive analyses of either individual poets or poetic themes, in addition to studies of the musical elements of the lyric.2 Of particular importance in the context of this article has been the use of troubadour lyric in studies of medieval subjectivity. Sarah Kay's work on the role of subjectivity in the lyric examines the development of and shifts between subject positions in the poetry, and provides the impetus for studies that widened their focus to include other, later repertoires.3 Likewise, Judith Peraino's work includes analyses of subject positions in troubadour lyric, and also focuses on later corpora such as the lyric poetry of the trouvères and the mono-phonic virelais of Guillaume de Machaut.4 Kay and Peraino shed light on the conception and development of medieval subjectivity in poetic works, disentangling the complex web of multiple subject positions inherent in a single song.

However, while Kay and Peraino demonstrate the multiplicity of subject positions inherent in the lyric, they do not address the phenomenon of personification present in numerous tornadas (such as the Raimon de Miraval example above).5 Although the phenomenon of personification is not widespread within the troubadour corpus as a whole, it is substantial enough to appear in the corpora of roughly forty other troubadours, including Rigaut de Berbezilh, Bernart de Ventadorn, Guiraut de Bornelh, Arnaut Daniel, and Peirol.6 Instances of personification occur in the songs's tornadas or, more rarely, in the final full stanza of a song, where they are asked (via direct address) to serve as messengers for their composers and are instructed to travel some undetermined distance to the message's recipient—usually a patron or the troubadour's beloved.7 This act of direct address combines with the composition's medium of performance and the lyric's transmission to further the development of a body for the personified song.8 Performance provides a living body (that of the singer) from which the song is initially generated, imbues the song itself with life and bodily substance through human breath, and personifies it via first-person address.

Analysis of the personified songs reveals that the songs themselves become subjects, and interact with other figures in the lyric. To fully understand the role of subjects and subjectivity in troubadour lyric, it is necessary to examine how the song itself, through performance, becomes a subject. [End Page 18]

The Tornada: History, Use, and Meaning

The end of a troubadour song is signaled by the tornada, a shortened stanza of two to five poetic lines. In addition to indicating the end...

pdf

Share