It happens that on my small yahoo list we are reading Meg Bodin's
Women Troubadours for the next 6 weeks or so, and in the last
couple of days I've read two essays on women troubadours and have
begun rereading this little volume -- which remains as important as
ever, though there has been a new edition of the poetry of the
troubadours which (perhaps the first time) includes a strong
representation of the women.

Here is a modern edition of the poetry a scholar and critic of this
poetry, William Paden, did together with Frances Freeman Paden, his
wife, a translator. It's expensive:

http://tinyurl.com/6gfmf7

According to Bodin and apparently still (at least in the one more
recent essay I read), we know little of this remarkable poet. Bodin
says she "was from the Auberge, from the region of Le Puy." A third
poem mentions her husband so she was married and Bodin suggests she
was "probably the wife of a nobleman who fought int he Fourth
Crusade." Three of her poems have survived.

The two essays which discuss her poetry are Marianne Shapiro, "The
Provencal Trobairitz and the Limits of courtly Love, Signs, 3:3
(1978):56-71 and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner' "Fictions of the Female
Voice: The Women Troubadours," Speculum, 67:4 (1992):865-91. Bruckner
discusses the poetry of the Countess of Dia (who I made foremother
poet posting for early on when I came onto the list) and
Castelloza. Bruckner says these differ radically in perspective from
the men's poetry: they both care about the subjective life of the
beloved. The Countess has to justify her right to write poetry and
her complaint her love is not returned; her argument is she has been
faithful and deserves to be loved for this and her virtues; beauty,
courtesy, intelligence. LIke the men, the Countess decries her
lover's pride. Castelloza's poems remind me of numerous Renaissance
women in their sonnets (Mary Wroth, Gaspara Stampa immediately come
to mind): she is betrayed; she gains superiority by her higher
loyalty and faithfulness; she too is aggressive in asserting her
right to love and has the right to not be haughty and rejecting
(which undermines the norms of this poetry which themselves depend
upon the sexist norms of the real world outside).

What I find particularly interesting in Bruckner is her assertion
that the women wrote in different genres than the men: tensos and
cansos. Of course they would not sing songs to their lord
asserting knightly valor, but their choice of debate and love song
was until recently (and still is) called inferior. Since reviewing
Paula Backscheider's book on 18th century women poets I've become so
aware how women prefer different genres and invent their own, and
these are often dismissed as inferior. Bruckner also catalogues a
whole group of mostly men whose articles are devoted to arguing there
were no women, most of these poems are by men and just anonymous or
to denigating some of it. Bruckner adds more women to Bodin by
taking seriously arguments about what is feminine poetry and
including more anonymous poems in women's modes, which seem strongly
to be by a woman, using women's imagery. archetypes, perspectives.

This poetry comes from a world which is supercomplicated and about
which many books have been written. For women it was one where they
had hardly any rights. It's still thought the few poems we have left
(hundreds for men, and only 23 women at most -- Bruckner's number --
identified) were able to write and assert themselves partly because
the men went on crusade, and the importance of powerful women at the
time at court is brought out (Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter
are mentioned by Bodin). But much historical work has been done
since. I like the chapter in Peter Dronke's Women Writers of the
Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite
Porete. He looks upon their poetry as personal. There's an online
book people can read: Catherine Ganiere's Women Troubadours in
Southern France: Personal Character, Unhappiness, and Revolting
Against Conventions: which concentrates mainly on the tenso, while drawing on
Shapiro and Bruckner and other essays:

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2248.pdf

Two more sources which really contain a good deal of material on the
women poets:

William Paden's The Voice of the Trobairitz. This collection of
essays is wholly on the women troubadours, and looks really
excellent. There are two essays on the poetry of Castelloza. Another
questions whether Bieris de Romans was lesbian; one that attracts me
is called "The Troubled existence of Three Women Poets," and more.

Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay's The Troubadours, An Introduction. One
essay is just on the women: "The trobairitz" by Tilde Sankovitch.

There are many books on the troubadours but until recently they
hardly ever mentioned women and women are still in a single (minority
type) chapter in some. Linda M. Paterson's The World of the
Troubadours, Medieval Occitan society, c 1100-1300 one one where you
get women discussed; hers is mostly hard history (and I'm with
Catherine Morland on this most of the time), but it has a
section devoted to court life and another called "Women" (a separate
category you see) where there are subsections on marriage and also courts.


Ellen Moody