BELE PUCELE: THE MUSIC AND IDENTITY OF MAROIE DE DERGNAU By Suzanna Grace Feldkamp A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Musicology—Master of Arts 2022 ABSTRACT BELE PUCELE: THE MUSIC AND IDENTITY OF MAROIE DE DERGNAU By Suzanna Grace Feldkamp Maroie de Dergnau is one of the few women whose names were recorded in trouvère chansonniers, as she is credited in several rubrics in the margins of these sources. She is cited as the author of the chanson d’amour Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) in MSS M and T, and she is an interlocutor in the jeu-parti Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744), held in MSS A and a. She is connected to Lille by the rubrics and to Arras through the chanson d’amour Bonne, belle, et avenant (RS 262), dedicated to her by Andrieu de Contredit, an Arrageois trouvère. My investigation into a trail of clues left by the sources that contain her name and music sheds new light on Maroie’s life, each chapter examining a different facet of her experience. Chapter One locates traces of Maroie in several documents, explaining the contents of these sources and their implications for Maroie’s identity, family, experience, possible birth year, and for women musicians’ history more broadly. Chapter Two discusses her chanson d’amour, Mout m’abelist (RS 1451), the twin meanings coded in its text and music, and explores its dialogic relationship with a chanson by Andrieu de Contredit. Chapter Three examines her jeu-parti, and I argue that its conversation centers its two women authors in a broader social dialogue concerning the connections between desire, agency, pain, and mental health. The music of the song is also constructed as an illustration of the process of debate itself. The information we gain by examining Maroie’s music, poetry, and identity has implications for future research and may assist in learning about other trouvères. This thesis is dedicated to my four wonderful, brilliant, supportive grandparents. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: Finding Maroie in Foundations: Another Look at the Evidence............................ 12 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 12 Evidence from Chansonniers............................................................................................. 13 The “Faubourg” of Dergnau.............................................................................................. 22 Obits................................................................................................................................... 29 Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 2: Great Is the Pleasure: Double Meaning and Response in Two Chansons d’Amours....................................................................................................................................... 34 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 34 Chansons d’Amours: Convention and Divergence............................................................ 35 Meaning in Mout m’abelist................................................................................................ 39 The Music of Mout m’abelist............................................................................................. 45 Replying to Maroie............................................................................................................ 57 Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER 3: Affording Agency: Music and Discourse in Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744).............................................................................................................................................. 65 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 65 The Social Role of the Jeu-Parti........................................................................................ 66 Compositional Elements.................................................................................................... 67 Contemplating Agency...................................................................................................... 71 Music and Choice.............................................................................................................. 80 Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 100 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................ 102 APPENDIX.................................................................................................................................. 105 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................ 107 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Chansons d’amours in women’s voices........................................................................ 37 Table 2.2: Alternate translations of reflexive verb “abelir” in context.......................................... 42 Table 2.3: Types of syllabic stress in Mout m’abelist................................................................... 52 Table 2.4: Locations of textual similarities between RS 1451 and RS 262................................... 61 Table 3.1: Abbreviations in musical analysis................................................................................ 86 Table 3.2: Types of syllabic stress in Mout m’abelist................................................................... 98 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) in MS M............................................................................ 16 Figure 1.2: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) in MS T............................................................................. 18 Figure 1.3: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS A........................................................... 20 Figure 1.4: Late-sixteenth century map of Lille (the Porte de Dergnau is circled in red)............. 24 Figure 2.1: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) lyrics and translation.........................................................39 Figure 2.2: Music and text of Mout m’abelist (RS 1451).............................................................. 48 Figure 2.3: Reduction of P2 into base scale................................................................................... 49 Figure 2.4: Divisions of the scales in frons....................................................................................50 Figure 2.5: Simplicity of P1 scales, embellishments in P2 scale................................................... 51 Figure 2.6: Contrast in length between first and second halves of P2........................................... 51 Figure 2.7: Reversal of opening scales from frons to cauda (P1 to P5).........................................53 Figure 2.8: Reversal of scales from P2 to P6................................................................................. 54 Figure 2.9: Poetic meter in the cauda.............................................................................................55 Figure 2.10: Duple and triple overlap in the cauda........................................................................ 55 Figure 2.11: “Bele pucele” note distribution in MS T................................................................... 56 Figure 2.12: “Bele pucele” variance in MS M............................................................................... 56 Figure 2.13: Bonne, belle, et avenant (RS 262) lyrics................................................................... 59 Figure 3.1: Lyrics and translation of Je vous Pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744)................................. 73 Figure 3.2: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS A........................................................... 82 Figure 3.3: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS a............................................................ 84 Figure 3.4: Themes in M1.............................................................................................................. 87 vi Figure 3.5: Themes in M1, complete, incomplete, and/or altered................................................. 88 Figure 3.6: Alteration of T1 theme, aligned by the placement of smaller units............................ 89 Figure 3.7: Alteration of T2 theme, aligned by the placement of smaller units............................ 90 Figure 3.8: T2 flow into note A..................................................................................................... 91 Figure 3.9: Unification of T2 with material from end of frons...................................................... 93 Figure 3.10: Tonal centers in M1................................................................................................... 95 Figure 3.11: Change in repeated content....................................................................................... 98 Figure 3.12: Poetic meter in P1 and P3 of M2...............................................................................98 Figure 3.13: Example of “contre” / “against” in distribution of triple and duple notes................ 99 vii INTRODUCTION The trouvère Maroie de Dergnau—spelled synonymously as Diergnau, Dregnau, and Drignau—is an example of the information stalemate in women’s history. While we know more about Maroie than we do about most women from her period, this “more” doesn’t amount to very much. Maroie is one of the few women whose names were recorded in trouvère chansonniers, as she is credited in several rubrics in the margins of these sources. She is cited as the author of the chanson d’amour Mout m’abelist (RS 1451)1 in MSS M and T. Precious evidence of this woman’s musicality is also held in MSS A and a, both of which contain a jeu- parti (the trouvère debate genre) by Maroie and another woman, Dame Margot.2 Wendy Pfeffer has recently attributed the crusade song Jerusalem, grant damage me fait (RS 191)—also in MS M—to Maroie by reexamining the ways that the source was constructed.3 Pfeffer’s study shows that progress can be made in the search for this musician. My investigation into a trail of clues left by the sources that contain her name and music sheds new light on Maroie’s life and experience. Maroie is connected to two important centers of trouvère music and poetry, Arras and Lille. Her connection to Arras is established through the chanson d’amour Bonne, belle, et 1 For all songs discussed in this thesis I will provide song numbers from the Raynauds-Spanke system of categorization to ease cross reference, abbreviated as RS; see Hans Spanke, Raynauds Bibliographie des Altfranzösischen Liedes (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955). 2 Holger Petersen-Dyggve, Onomastique des Trouvères (1934; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), 176. Petersen-Dyggve does not give any description of his reasoning, but under the entry for her name he writes, “La dame Maroie ou dame Marote, l’une des partenaires du jeu-parti R. 1744, est peut-être le même personnage.” In his entry immediately above, for “MAROIE (dame),” he writes, “peut-être identique à Maroie de Diergnau.” His attribution of the song to Maroie de Dergnau is generally accepted by the scholastic community. See for example Eglal Doss Quinby, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubrey, Songs of the Women Trouvères (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 27. 3 Wendy Pfeffer, “Attributing Another Song to Maroie de Diergnau de Lille,” Textual Cultures 14, no. 2 (2021): 128. 1 avenant (RS 262), which was written by Andrieu de Contredit, who was based there. In this work, he asks the song itself to go to “Marote” in “Dergan,”4 and in this action, he links Maroie to the vast network of trouvères in Arras. Arras was the location of an episcopal See and, as Carol Symes puts it, was a “crucible” of cultural production.5 It was constituted by both a city, which was the bishop’s domain, and a town under the lordship of the Abbey of St. Vaast.6 According to Yolanda Plumley, “Arras was an important center for trade and banking and its economic prosperity fostered a dynamic environment for cultural exchanges that brought together different sectors of society.”7 These cultural exchanges flourished in the Confraternity of Jongleurs and Bourgeois, also known as the Carité de Notre Dame des Ardents d’Arras. The confraternity is widely known as an organization of trouvères and other musicians, the largest of its period, and its membership represented a diverse cross section of Arrageois society.8 Maroie’s association with the Flemish city of Lille is apparent in MS M, where the rubric credits “Maroie de Dregnau de Lille.” Unlike Arras, Lille was not an episcopal See, so the city was not as politically important in the thirteenth century as those which were centers of religious activity, like Tournai and Paris.9 Its geographic position did place it on several trade routes (between Arras and Bruges, for example), and it was the center of a number of intense military conflicts.10 Because the city has not received as much attention for its cultural production as 4 Deborah Hubbard Nelson and Hendrik van der Werf, The Songs Attributed to Andrieu Contredit d’Arras (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), 113-115. 5 Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theatre and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 1. 6 Ibid., 31. 7 Yolanda Plumley, The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 155. 8 Ibid., 153-156. 9 Detailed discussion of medieval Paris and Tournai can be found throughout Sarah Long, Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300-1550 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2021). 10 See Alexandre de Saint-Léger, Histoire de Lille: des Origines à 1789 (Lille: Émile Raoust, 1942), 41 for discussion of the 1213 siege and consequent incineration of Lille. 2 Arras has, the extent of its musical scene is not fully understood, but there were certainly other trouvères whose primary associations were with Lille. Maroie’s connection to both of these cities would suggest that she knew a significant number of musicians. A few scholars have attempted to gather information on Maroie, but little conclusive evidence has been discovered. Holger Petersen-Dyggve said that she was from a suburb of Lille called Diergnau, but he does not go any further or reference any sources.11 The editors of the anthology Songs of the Women Trouvères cite Petersen-Dyggve’s information, and they add that, since Andrieu de Contredit probably died in 1248, Maroie likely lived in the first half of the thirteenth century.12 In Adolphe Guesnon’s five-paragraph biography of Andrieu, two paragraphs and a footnote are dedicated to discussing Maroie de Dergnau.13 More specifically, one paragraph discusses alterations to her name and the “faubourg” of Diergnau, one mentions a man named Philippe de Dergnau who appears in several documents from Flanders, and there is a footnote explaining that a “Marotain de Diergnau” is listed in rent documents from the first half of the fourteenth century, up until 1351.14 He presumably documented these individuals in connection to Andrieu because of the latter’s address to Maroie in Bonne, belle, et avenant, but Guesnon’s work here appears to be preliminary. The “Marotain” mentioned in the footnote lived far too late to be the same person as Maroie de Dergnau. This is the extent of the established information on Maroie’s identity. 11 Petersen-Dyggve, Onomastique, 176. 12 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 27. See also Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 3-5. 13 Adolphe Guesnon, Nouvelles recherches biographiques sur les trouvères Artésiens (Paris: E. Bouillon, 1902), 24. 14 My own investigations in Chapter One give detail on Philippe de Dergnau. Guesnon writes, “Marie de Drignan, alias Dergan, Desgan, est un nom estropié pour Dieregnau, Diergnau, Dergnau, faubourg de l’ancien Lille, avec château féodal dont la place actuelle dite ‘des Reignaux’, indique la situation. Philippe de Dergnau, chevalier, est cite dans bon nombre de chartes de 1224 à 1237. C’est certainement dans son entourage immédiat que vivait cette Marote de Dergnau avec laquelle Andrieu Contredit entretenait un commerce de galanterie tout au moin littéraire,” and “Une Marotain de Diergnau est inscrite aux comptes annuels des rentes à vie dues par la ville de Lille de 1301- 1302 à 1350-1351,” Nouvelles Rescherches, 24. 3 Although we know very little about Maroie, her existence and authorship of chanson is certain, in part because of the confirmation by Andrieu in his piece and in part because of her connection to several manuscripts. MS M gives one of the most complete pictures of contemporary secular music from throughout France, compiling Occitan songs, lais, two- and three-voice motets, rondeaux, and even instrumental pieces.15 It contains 223 folios, with music notated in two columns. MS M features occasional gilded illuminations of trouvères, frequently picturing them as knights on horseback or clerics. It was originally illuminated with dozens of family crests, but most of them were cut out at some point in its history.16 Maroie is cited as “Maroie de Dregnau de Lille” on folios 181r-v, her name inked in red directly above a decorated initial.17 The transcription is just one stanza of text with music, but the scribe left blank space beneath for four additional stanzas. In MS T, she is called “Maroie de Drignau” on folio 169r in a rubric sitting on the upper righthand corner of the staves.18 The music is notated in five-line square notation, and, setting aside obvious scribal errors, the melody is almost exactly the same as that which is notated in MS M. The scribes wrote one stanza of poetry for Mout m’abelist, but unlike MS M, there is no room for additional stanzas.19 15 Christopher Callahan, “Collecting Trouvère Lyric at the Periphery: The Lessons of MSS Paris, BnF fr. 20050 and Bern, Burgerbibliothek 389,” Textual Cultures 8, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 21. 16 Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 55; Doss Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 52. 17 MS M is digitized on Gallica, accessed November 24, 2021, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84192440/f377.item.r=francais%20844.zoom#. 18 MS T is digitized on Gallica, accessed November 24, 2021, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007945/f349.item.r=12615. 19 For discussion of this source, see Samuel N. Rosenberg and Eglal Doss-Quinby, “Philological Complement to Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles (BnF f. fr. 12615), Part 1: Language of the Scribe and Versification,” Textual Cultures 10, no. 2 (2016-2018): 51-75. I go into greater detail about MS T in Chapter One. 4 Maroie’s jeu-parti with Dame Margot, Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744), is transcribed in two sources from Arras: MS A20 and MS a.21 In both sources, the songs are notated in two columns: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie appears on folios 140r-v in MS a, and folios 141v-142r of MS A. Neither manuscript includes an image of Maroie or Margot, but we know both of their names because, as was standard in jeux-partis, the first words of the first two stanzas are the interlocutors addressing each other. So, for Je vous pri, Dame Maroie, the first words of the first stanza are “Dame Maroie,” and the first words of the second stanza (where Maroie begins to sing), are “Dame Margot.” In MS a, each new verse is indicated with a colored initial; Dame Maroie’s verses begin with small, gilded letters, and each of Dame Margot’s verses begin with small, blue letters. Their debate is bookended by the same jeux-partis in both sources: one between Jehan Bretel and Jehan de Grieviler, and another between Jehan Bretel and Lambert Ferri. While the attributions to Maroie and her authorship of Je vous pri have, for the most part, been taken at their word, not all women’s authorship in trouvère music has been seen as valid. Apart from Maroie, seven other women are listed in rubrics next to specific songs within the margins of trouvère chansonniers.22 The rubrics offer varying degrees of specificity, ranging from “Lorete” to Blanche de Castille (the queen regent of France at two different points in time). Several women are also acknowledged as judges in jeux-partis, bringing the count of women 20 MS A is digitized on the Bibliothèque Virtuelle des Manuscrits Médiévaux, accessed November 24, 2020, https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=ecran&panier=false&reproductionId=19136&VUE_ID=168101 3&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes=4x3&page=14&angle=0&zoom=moyen&tailleReelle=. 21 MS a is digitized on the Digital Vatican Library, accessed November 24, 2020, https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1490. 22 Other than Maroie de Diergnau, Blanche de Castille, the Dame de Gosnai, the Dame de la Chaucie, the Duchesse de Lorraine, Lorete, Dame Margot, and Sainte des Prez are named authors; the Comtesse de Linaige, Mahaut de Commercy, Béatrice de Courtrai, the Dame de Fouencamp, the Dame de Danemoi, and Demisele Oede are judges in jeux-partis. See Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 26. 5 known to be involved with the trouvère tradition to 14.23 Compared to the 256 men involved, this number is small. Several scholars have even indicated that there were no women trouvères at all. Most famously, Alfred Jeanroy and Pierre Bec each claimed, in different centuries, that there were not any women trouvères, and in the case of Jeanroy, he saw the women’s names listed in chansonniers as unrealistic based on a belief that women would have written more tender, delicate, simple poems that represented the “shades” of feminine modesty.24 In the last 50 years or so, scholars have become more interested in women musicians and dedicated time to learning about their involvement in authorship. Peter Dronke’s 1984 book explored women’s authorship across Europe, but, unfortunately, he did not include any texts by the women trouvères, claiming that “it is hard to identify characteristic women’s thoughts and feelings or to distinguish these from the role-playing which is inseparable from genres of poetic debates.”25 Maria Coldwell’s article on women jongleurs and the trobairitz broke ground on compiling this corpus, and Madeleine Tyssens continued this work several years later.26 Eglal Doss-Quinby’s groundbreaking article on women in jeux-partis set the stage for the anthology mentioned above, Songs of the Women Trouvères, which is a crucial guide for the study of 23 Ibid., 26. 24 See Pierre Bec, “’Trobairitz’ et chanson de femme: Contribution à la Connaissance du Lyrisme Féminin au Moyen Âge,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 22 (1979): 236; as Jeanroy wrote, “on se figure difficilement que des femmes aient abdiqué aussi complètement leur personnalité en prenant la plume. Si ces chansons étaient dues à des femmes, on y trouverait sans doute un accent plus tendre, plus ému, plus de discrétion surtout el quelque ombre de pudeur féminine; il n'en est rien. Si quelques-unes d'entre elles, comme la plupart de celles qui sont anciennes, ont de la vivacité et de la simplicité, aucune ne se distingue par le ton ou les sentiments des chansons dues aux poètes de profession,” See Alfred Jeanroy, Les origins de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge (Paris: Hachette, 1889), 96. For a detailed description of the history of scholarship on women trouvères, see Doss-Quinby, et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 1-5. 25 Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 98. 26 Maria Coldwell, “Jougleresses and Trobairitz: Secular Musicians in Medieval France,” in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986), 39-61; and Madeleine Tyssens, “Voix de Femmes dans la Lyrique d’Oïl,” in Femmes, Mariages-Lignages, XII-XIV Siècles: Mélanges Offerts à Georges Duby (Brussels: De Boeck University, 1992), 373-387. 6 trouvère song.27 The editors compile dozens of feminine-voiced songs, both attributed and anonymous.28 Most recently, Rachel Ruisard has written a dissertation dedicated to women’s voices in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308.29 One of the most revealing studies on the topic of women’s voices in the trouvère repertoire is Brianne Dolce’s 2020 archival study on the membership of the Confraternity of Jongleurs and Bourgeois in Arras, described above, which shows that nearly half the members of the confraternity were women.30 Dolce’s work dismantles even the smallest notion that attributions to women musicians were fake; it proves that women were regular contributors to the creation of the trouvère song corpus. Not only does this information assist in validating discussions and analyses of women’s song, but it also suggests that those analyses are broadly applicable to women’s lives since women were, according to Dolce’s research, deeply involved in music making. While their lives differed vastly at different times and in different localities, during the period when Maroie lived records show that women had decent economic and social prospects, especially in the north. Living in the densely populated county of Flanders afforded women working opportunities in its many important manufacturing cities.31 Ellen E. Kittel suggests that the high population and more advanced economic system of Flanders also led to differences in 27 Eglal Doss-Quinby, “’Rolan, de ceu ke m’avez/parti dirai mon samblant’: The Feminine Voice in the Old French jeu-parti,” Neophilologus 84, no. 4 (1999), 497-516; see also Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères. 28 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, vii-x. 29 I would like to express my gratitude to Rachel Ruisard for sharing a copy of this dissertation with me. Rachel Ruisard, “Women’s Voices in a Fourteenth-Century Chansonnier: Representation and Performance in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308” (PhD Diss., University of Maryland, 2021). Other helpful research includes: Beverly J. Evans, “Women Trouvères: Just the Same Old Refrains?” Neophilologus 90 (2006): 1-11; Cynthia J. Cyrus and Olivia Carter Mather, “Rereading Absence: Women in Medieval and Renaissance Music,” College Music Symposium 38 (1998): 101-117; and Anne L. Klinck and Ann Marie Rasmussen, ed., Medieval Women’s Song: Cross-Cultural Approaches (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 30 Brianne Dolce, “’Soit hom u feme’: New Evidence for Women Musicians and the Search for the ‘Women Trouvères,’’’ Revue de Musicologie 106, no. 2 (September 2020): 301-328, especially 309-310. 31 Ellen E. Kittell, “’Half as Much as a Man’? Gender Ideology and Practice in Medieval Flanders,” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 1 (Spring 2011), 133-135. 7 its customary laws, which (at least until the mid-fourteenth century) required women to pay the same fines for crimes that men paid.32 Further south, in Paris, young women were also educated as a way to increase their marriageability, and while this might have been an unfortunate motive for allowing girls to learn, it did have positive effects on their lives, leading some to further opportunities as, for example, business owners, book keepers, or schoolteachers.33 In religious life, the authority of abbesses sometimes trumped that of bishops.34 One example from central France is the nuns of the Abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, who methodically developed an argument for the legitimacy of their authority that allowed them to hold this significant power for nearly 1,000 years.35 Early in the abbey’s history, one of its important figures, St. Radegund, procured a relic of the true cross from the Byzantine emperor and had it installed against the wishes of the bishop of Poitiers. The installment was supported instead by the king and the bishop of Tours.36 Beguines—religious lay women who lived together in designated neighborhoods (beguinages) but took no vows—supported themselves and other women, handling their own wealth and managing their own communities.37 Although the Church tried to prevent it, women and men were able to marry privately, choosing their spouses without the consent of parents, simply by stating the words, “I marry you.”38 32 Ibid., 132-154. 33 William J. Courtenay, Rituals for the Dead: Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 82-86. Though there is no proof of women studying at the university itself, Courtenay discusses how women were integral to its functioning and elaborates upon women obtaining elementary or later education, sometimes running businesses, and sometimes becoming schoolteachers. For discussions of another common career for women, see Carole Rawcliffe, “A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work,” Gender & History 21, no. 1 (April 2009): 147-169. 34 Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitier’s Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 26 and 60-85. 35 Ibid., 1-5. 36 Ibid., 66-74. 37 Penelope Galloway, “’Discreet and Devout Maidens’: Women’s Involvement in Beguine Communities in Northern France, 1200-1500,” in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), 93-97. 38 Sara McDougall, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2012), 1-7. 8 Despite the evidence above, women’s freedoms did not extend indefinitely, as they were frequently limited and endangered by social conceptions of their worth. In the eyes of the Church, a woman’s worth was often attached to her status as virgin, wife, or widow.39 Writers who subscribed to this idea considered virgins to be the purest and therefore the most honorable; wives, on the other hand, were impure, and their sexual status as non-virgins was seen as shameful, regardless of the legality of their marriage.40 The feminine gender was also frequently painted in theatrical works as not valuable, as they are, for example, in the romance Tristan de Nanteuil.41 In this work, the hero is portrayed as an ironic female, a biological woman who performs ‘manly’ traits. She excels in what are seen as masculine forays, such as warfare, and she excels so much that her sex is amended when God turns her vagina into a penis.42 This genital mutilation “from above” served as a signal that heroic characteristics in a woman did not actually belong to that woman and that a woman could not be proficient in such valued activities. Mutilation of women’s bodies is also evident in several motets by Machaut, where a woman’s body parts go through zoomorphosis to represent beasts.43 Sexual assault was even encouraged by certain writers. One of the most widely quoted phrases from Andreas Capellanus’s twelfth- century treatise De Amore is, as translated by Jennifer Saltzstein, “puff [the peasant women] up 39 Anke Bernau, “Medieval Antifeminism,” in The History of British Women’s Writing, 700-1500, vol. 1, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 74. 40 Ibid., 74. 41 Kimberlee Campbell, “Acting Like a Man: Performing Gender in Tristan de Nanteuil,” in Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, ed. Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, and E. Jane Burns (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007), 79-89. 42 Ibid., 79-89; for other examples of masculinity and femininity in medieval theatrical works, see Roberta L. Krueger, “Questions of Gender in Old French Courtly Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 132-149; and Sandra Pierson Prior, “’Kar des dames est avenue / L’aventure’: Displacing the Chivalric Hero in Marie de France’s Eliduc,” in Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, ed. James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1998), 123-139. 43 Karen Desmond, “Refusal, the Look of Love, and the Beastly Woman of Machaut’s Balades 27 and 38,” Early Music History 32 (2013): 71-118. This topic is discussed throughout Desmond’s article. 9 with lots of praise and then, when you find a convenient place, do not hesitate to take what you seek and to embrace them by force.”44 The subject of Capellanus’s treatise was courtly love, which inherently centered and privileged masculinity and was the main topic of trouvère music. Fin amour, or the practice of refined, perfect, courtly love, was considered the ideal love for medieval nobility. In chansons d’amours (also known as grands chants), courtly love led narrators to cast a beautiful, disinterested, “hard to get” noblewoman, called “la Dame,” as the image of perfection.45 She is loved precisely because she is so difficult to seduce, and unlike the violent solution presented in pastourelles—in which knights often rape shepherdesses—the noble solution in chansons d’amours was for the man to accept her rejection for the sake of courtly conduct.46 While la Dame’s rejection comes as a result of her lacking warmth, the masculine narrator’s proficiency in courtly code is meant to signify his soulfulness.47 Courtly love ties women to the body and men to the soul; women to sexual intercourse and men to spiritual love.48 In this way, men built their own centrality, constructing themselves as superior to women through courtly love and its representations in trouvère song. Women were aware of the prejudices that existed in courtly life, and my thesis deepens our understanding of women’s experiences by examining Maroie’s identity and music. Chapter One locates traces of Maroie in several documents, particularly a necrology and cartulary from the Collegiate Church of St. Pierre in Lille and a cartulary from the Abbey of Marquette, also in Lille. These documents contain records of her family’s status and activities during the thirteenth 44 Jennifer Saltzstein, “Rape and Repentance in Two Medieval Motets,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 70, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 583. 45 One of many sources to discuss this topic, see Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 36. 46 Helen Dell, Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 12-15 and 53-60. 47 Ibid., 53-60. 48 Ibid., 104-105. 10 century, and she herself is mentioned within the necrology. Chapter One explains the contents of these sources and their implications for Maroie’s identity, experience, possible birth year, and for women musicians’ history more broadly. After establishing her identity, Chapters Two and Three focus on musical, textual, and social analysis. Chapter Two discusses her chanson d’amour, Mout m’abelist (RS 1451), the twin meanings coded in its text and music, and references to her work in the chanson by Andrieu de Contredit. At the end of his song, Bonne, belle, et avanant (RS 262), Andrieu includes an “envoi” (a stanza of text dedicating the poem to a specific individual) that addresses Maroie. The chapter explores conversations hiding in these texts, which contain mirrored language in key locations, suggesting that the chanson d’amour had a dialogic function. Chapter Three continues the topic of “conversation” by examining Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744). I argue that this conversation goes beyond the song, centering the two women in a broader social dialogue concerning the connections between desire, agency, pain, and mental health. The music of the song is also constructed as an illustration of the process of debate itself. The participation of women in this game-like debate confirms that elite women of the Low Countries were extensively educated and musically knowledgeable. By exploring her music, poetry, life, and social landscape, we learn not only about Maroie but about women’s musical experiences in general. More than this, my thesis treats the issues of women trouvères as issues of all trouvères. Despite whatever circumstances kept most women’s names out of song books, the evidence shows that women were integral to trouvère culture in all its facets and helps to give them a voice in their own experience. In this way, my thesis builds on our understanding of trouvère culture in general while opening a door for future studies of the identities of the women who were a part of it. 11 CHAPTER 1: Finding Maroie in Foundations: Another Look at the Evidence Introduction While little is known about Maroie de Dergnau, there are opportunities to build our knowledge of her through re-examination of the manuscripts that contain her work. Since musical documents are not the only sources with which we can come to understand the trouvères, consulting additional manuscripts can assist us in our hunt for information. Moving beyond the confines of chansonniers is especially critical when attempting to understand the women trouvères. Other kinds of documents from the period, like necrologies and cartularies, preserve information about the communities where these musicians lived, made music, and interacted with family and friends. We can gather information about Maroie from music manuscripts, but it is also possible to expand our field of knowledge by scouring documents without music that relate important information about her life. In this chapter, I consult both musical and non-musical sources to construct a better picture of Maroie’s experience. I review what we can learn by looking at the music manuscripts where her name appears and at other documents from the city of Lille. In particular, I have found Maroie’s name and those of several family members in a necrology from the collegiate church of St. Pierre in Lille, which contains obits recorded from the twelfth century through the fourteenth century. As a unit, these sources suggest a timeframe for her life, centering her as an author of popular music during the height of trouvère activity. They also tell us about some of the people with whom she interacted and the environment in which she lived. Small details can 12 communicate a great deal about Maroie, and all the evidence, both musical and non-musical, paints an image of her life that opens the door to further inquiries. Evidence From Chansonniers Trouvère manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are not only crucial sources of information about the music written by these musicians, but they also provide important information about trouvères’ lives. While the sources are not nearly as detailed as those documenting the troubadours—which often contain short biographies and images of the singers1—there are still opportunities to learn about the people themselves from these documents. For example, Jennifer Saltztein’s study of trouvère music and landscape connects illuminations of knights riding horses to aristocratic musical identity in chansons.2 Emma Dillon’s study of medieval soundscape also details the visual creation of sonic chaos through images in manuscript margins.3 Though the sources that contain Maroie’s music do not provide a vast amount of information about her (none of them contains pictorial evidence for Maroie, for instance), they do show that she was a skilled, well-known musician who was valued by her community. One chanson d’amour, Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) and one jeu-parti, Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) are attributed to Maroie, and in 2021, Wendy Pfeffer made a convincing argument that one more song from MS M was written by Maroie.4 She attributes Jerusalem, 1 See, for example, Paul Zumthor, “An Overview: Why the Troubadours?,” 11; and William D. Paden, “Manuscripts,” 307-312. Both of these chapters appear in A Handbook of the Troubadours eds. F.R.P Akenhurst and Judith M. Davis (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). 2 Jennifer Saltzstein, “Songs of Nature in Medieval Northern France: Landscape, Identity, and Environment,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 1 (2019): 115-180. See particularly 124-141. 3 Emma Dillon, The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 129-173. 4 Wendy Pfeffer, “Attributing Another Song to Maroie de Diergnau de Lille,” Textual Cultures 14, no. 2 (2021): 115-133. 13 grant damage me fait (RS 191) to Maroie by citing scholarly understanding of the manuscript’s erratic rubrication.5 This crusade song is definitively in a woman’s voice, using feminine adjectives and mourning a lover gone to war, and it was transcribed on the same bifolio as Mout m’abelist.6 This development proves there is more to learn about Maroie from sources that have already been thoroughly examined. The same manuscript that Wendy Pfeffer examined, MS M, was the first manuscript to credit Maroie, and its dating and history indicate that Maroie was an adult performing in public settings by at least the middle of the century (see Figure 1.17). No concrete date is recorded in the manuscript, but it is one of the earliest trouvère chansonniers and was probably compiled starting in the 1250s.8 Judith Peraino concludes that MS M was constructed by over 20 scribes during the following 50-year period.9 The second half of the manuscript is focused on musicians from Arras, marking the beginning of the late thirteenth-century shift away from seigneurial courts and towards public, urban areas as centers of music performance.10 Maroie’s song is transcribed well into the second half of the manuscript, in middle of the section that marks the importance of locality in music practice. Maroie’s connection with Arras and the timing of the source’s compilation centers her in the first half of the thirteenth century as a public performer. The layout and scribal practices of MS M show that Maroie’s chanson was well-known. Although this source records only one stanza of text for Mout m’abelist, the scribe left room for 5 Ibid., 128. 6 Ibid., 120. 7 MS M is digitized on Gallica, accessed November 24, 2021, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84192440/f377.item.r=francais%20844.zoom#. 8 Christopher Callahan, “Collecting Trouvère Lyric at the Peripheries: The Lessons of MSS Paris, BnF fr. 20050 and Bern, Burgerbibliothek 389,” Textual Cultures 8, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 20-21. 9 Judith Peraino, “Re-placing Medieval Music,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 2 (2001): 232. 10 Callahan, “Collecting Trouvère Lyric,” 21-22. 14 four more.11 Many pieces in the manuscript are transcribed like this, serving as examples of the different stages of its compilation, since its music was transcribed separately from its text.12 When the scribe went through the manuscript to notate the music, Maroie’s melody was written into the staves while the surrounding songs remained un-notated. It may be missing eighty percent of its lyrics, but the fact that the scribes knew her melody better than many others in the chansonnier indicates that it was well-known, nonetheless. 11 Eglal Doss Quinby, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubrey, Songs of the Women Trouvères (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 116. 12 Peraino, “Re-placing Medieval Music,” 233-234. 15 Figure 1.1: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) in MS M 16 Figure 1.1 cont’d 17 Figure 1.2: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) in MS T 18 The other manuscript that contains this piece, MS T (see Figure 1.213), positions Maroie on equal footing with most of the other trouvères whose music is transcribed in the source. According to Rosenberg and Doss-Quinby, one poet transcribed the lyrics in the 1270s in a mix of central and northeastern French dialects, leaning towards the Old French, or central, side.14 They explain that peculiar spellings within the text are a testament to the imagination of the scribe,15 which emphasizes the individuality and thought that went into compiling this source. This specific use of language shows the importance of locality to the manuscript, suggesting that each singer selected for the compilation, including Maroie, represented a locally, communally valued musician. Additionally, the manuscript has some large-scale illuminations of the best- known trouvères, but most songs begin with a decorated initial. The first letter of Maroie’s piece is a decorated initial; while she was not one of the most famous, the scribes handled her music just as they did the majority of other authors unmarked with large illuminations. Maroie’s significance moves beyond her presence in the two sources mentioned above since she was also an active participant in the jeu-parti tradition, exemplifying her ability to engage in savvy discourse. Maroie is challenged by Dame Margot in Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744), the only debate by named women transcribed in MSS A and a.16 Although she is not cited in the rubrics for the song—only in the lyrics and only as “Dame Maroie”—Maroie de 13 MS T is digitized on Gallica, accessed November 24, 2021, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007945/f349.item.r=12615. 14 John Haines sets the manuscript slightly later, circa 1280. See John Haines, Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21; and ibid., 51-52. 15 Rosenberg and Doss-Quinby, “Philological Complement to Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles (BnF f. fr. 12615), Part 1: Language of the Scribe and Versification,” Textual Cultures 10, no. 2 (2016-2018): 75. 16 MS A is digitized on the Bibliothèque Virtuelle des Manuscrits Médiévaux, accessed November 24, 2020, https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=ecran&panier=false&reproductionId=19136&VUE_ID=168101 3&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes=4x3&page=14&angle=0&zoom=moyen&tailleReelle=. Unfortunately, I was not able to use images of MS a in this document, but it is digitized in the Digital Vatican Library, accessed November 24, 2020, https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1490. Please refer to the digitized source. 19 Dergnau was identified as the probable interlocutor by Holger Petersen-Dyggve.17 Both sources come from Arras, and both testify to the importance of the debate genre, since they contain more jeux-partis than any other type of chanson except for chansons d’amours.18 That Maroie is one of two named women associated with the debates in these sources suggests that she had a prominent role in the tradition. Figure 1.3: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS A 17 Holger Petersen-Dyggve, Onomastique des Trouvères (1934; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), 176. Petersen-Dyggve does not give any description of his reasoning, but under the entry for her name he writes, “La dame Maroie ou dame Marote, l’une des partenaires du jeu-parti R. 1744, est peut-être le même personnage.” In his entry immediately above, for “MAROIE (dame),” he writes, “peut-être identique à Maroie de Diergnau.” 18 Callahan, “Collecting Trouvère Lyric,” 22. 20 The depiction of trouvères in MS A indicates that both Maroie and Dame Margot were considered legitimate writers. Christopher Callahan calls MS A an “exemplar of proper behavior” since the trouvères’ more ribald genres like the pastourelle are excluded.19 Sylvia Huot suggests that this manuscript positions trouvères as not only musicians but authors through their portrayals in illuminations.20 If MS A represented the scribe’s idea of propriety, then women like Maroie who participated in public debate were not looked down upon for that action but held in high regard because of it. Additionally, Je vous pri’s music in MS a is different from that recorded in MS A, which, according to the editors of Songs of the Women Trouvères, indicates that songs by women were thought of highly enough to encourage multiple melodies for their texts.21 From the manuscripts containing her music, we can tell that Maroie was accepted by the trouvère community as an author and that her music was well-known. The rubrics in these manuscripts give us an opportunity to learn more from looking at non-musical sources. “Dregnau,” “Drignau,” and “Lille” are, of course, clues that direct the search, grounding Maroie in Lille, France in the mid-thirteenth century. Though a couple of scholars have said that she came from this area, no one to this point has found her full name in any sources apart from MS M and MS T. A detailed look at archival documents from Lille transcribed by Édouard Hautcoeur, unnamed members of the Société de l’Histoire de France, and several other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editors of court documents reveals a number of details about her life and family, which I outline below. 19 Callahan, “Collecting Trouvère Lyric,” 23. 20 Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 57 and 250. 21 “The existence of two unrelated melodies for this text suggests that even a poem in the voices of women was admired widely enough to have inspired different musical settings,” Doss-Quinby, et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 78. I will also note that while the melodies are different, the songs immediately preceding and following Je vous pri, dame Maroie in MS A are the same ones that surround it in MS a. 21 The “Faubourg” of Dergnau A few scholars have referred to the “faubourg” (suburb) of Dergnau during their brief descriptions of Maroie. In his onomastic dictionary of all names related to trouvère music, Petersen-Dyggve said that she came from this faubourg of Lille, which also had a contemporary castle.22 Unfortunately, he did not point his readers to any documents that refer to this place. And, unlike other medieval faubourgs of Lille that still exist on maps today (like Wazemmes, Roubaix, Fives, etc.), there is no modern-day Lillois neighborhood referred to as “Diergnau,” as the author described it. Adolphe Guesnon, writing in 1902, says a little more, indicating that today this area of Lille is called des Reignaux.23 While he cites documents that reference a Philippe de Dergnau (discussed below) and a Marotain de Diergnau (who, as discussed in the introduction, could not have possibly been Maroie de Dergnau since she lived a century too late), he does not give any further indication of where this place is or, more importantly, how it related to Maroie.24 To further our understanding of Maroie and her life it is helpful to reconstruct the neighborhood where she lived, which was evidently an important part of the city. The area called “des Reignaux,” which is indicated as a suburb by Guesnon in 1902, is the same area that is called “Place des Reignaux” today. If it was once a neighborhood, suburb, or public square, today it is only a street with parking on each side of the road. In his 1888 history of medieval Lille, Jules Flammermont mentions a Porte de Dergnau, or gate of Dergnau, which he positions between what is now the Place des Reignaux and the church of St. Maurice, just a few blocks to the south.25 A document held at the Archives Municipale de Lille, dated Friday, August 4, 1302, 22 Petersen-Dyggve, Onomastique des Trouvères, 82 and 176. 23 Adolphe Guesnon, Nouvelles recherches biographiques sur les trouvères Artésiens (Paris: E. Bouillon, 1902), 24. 24 Ibid., 24 25 See Jules Flammermont, Lille et le Nord au Moyen Age (Lille: Librairie Centrale, 1888), 65. 22 confirms the existence of this gate.26 The document, a piece of parchment attached to the seals of Guy and Jean de Flandres, explains that its purpose was to guarantee the safety of these men during their discussions with a rival at the Porte de Dergnau.27 On a sixteenth-century map of the area (see Figure 1.4), the gate is in the same location as it was in the fourteenth century.28 Since the gate is listed as a meeting ground, and because of its position facing east towards Tournai and Yprés—two other important medieval cities—this area would have been a high-traffic location in Lille. 26 PAT/7/74, “Sauf-conduit accordé par Jean, comte de Namur,” Archives Municipales de Lille, accessed November 30, 2021, https://archives.lille.fr/ark:/74900/a011429097755rp37x2/6452433313. The archive’s abbreviation of the document’s contents is: “Sauf-conduit délivré par Jean, comte de Namur et Gui de Flandre, son frère, au comte de ‘Sansoirre’ et à ‘le ville de Lille’ pour venir ‘parler a no conseil dehors le porte de Dergnau lui vintisme de son conseil et de le ville de Lille, simplement et sans armes jusques à chest prochain diemanche à heure de miedi.’” 27 Ibid. 28 The map is held in Gallica’s archives. Georg Braun, “Lille, Insula, Rÿssele,” 33x43 cm, “Gallica,” 1645, accessed April 5, 2022, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53178859j/f1.item.zoom#. Although the map was published in 1645, Gallica’s descriptive entries give the engravers name, Frans Hogenberg, and state that he died around 1590, so the map would have been published earlier. See also Gilles Blieck, “Le Château Dit de Courtrai à Lille de 1298 à 1339: Une Citadelle Avant l’Heure,” Bulletin Monumental 155, no. 3 (1997): 187. Today the gate in this location is called Porte de Roubaix. 23 Figure 1.4: Late-sixteenth century map of Lille (the Porte de Dergnau is circled in red) There was also a seigneurial home in the immediate proximity of the Porte de Dergnau, and it shared a title with the gate. During the 1213 siege of Lille, the French king Philip Augustus captured a house on the city’s fortifications, referred to as the Fort de Dergnau.29 Unfortunately, after inhabitants of Lille attempted to retake the city, the king incinerated this area, destroying all the homes and the fortified house in question.30 While it is unlikely that we 29 Alexandre de Saint-Léger, Histoire de Lille: des Origines à 1789 (Lille: Émile Raoust, 1942), 41; Société de l’Histoire de France, Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d’Angleterre (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1849), 139; Auguste Fromont and August de Meunynck, Histoire des Canonniers de Lille (Lille: L. Quarré, 1892), 1:11-12; Flammermont, Lille et le Nord, 65; Blieck, “Le Château de Courtrai,” 187. 30 Saint-Léger, Histoire de Lille, 41; and Fromont and Meunynck, Histoire des Canonniers, 12. 24 will ever know the exact position of the house, we can determine its probable location by referencing the gate, the Place des Reignaux, and the modern-day fortifications that remain.31 It is important to point out what may seem obvious: seigneurial homes shared their names with a family. Since this home, the nearby gate, and the neighborhood were called “Dergnau” in the thirteenth century, it is likely that there would be a thirteenth-century family called “Dergnau,” potentially connected to Maroie. Guesnon mentions someone named Philippe de Dergnau in his biography of Andrieu, but the corresponding footnote relates to several topics and does not differentiate between the sources, making it difficult to piece together the locations where he found Philippe’s name.32 In the body of the text, he writes that the legal entries mentioning Philippe are from the period between 1224 and 1237.33 I have located Philippe de Dergnau in different sources from those mentioned in Guesnon’s footnote, and the entries I have found that involve Philippe have a much broader range of dates, 1204-1238. I have also located another figure who is very closely connected to Philippe, a man named Jean de Dergnau. The bulk of the entries that mention Philippe and Jean are in two cartularies from institutions in Lille, one from the collegiate church of St. Pierre and the other from the Abbey of Marquette.34 The entries I have found that mention Philippe de Dergnau suggest a growth in familial status during his lifetime. In 1204, Philippe de Dergnau is one of several men who give testimony in a case addressing the property of a monk, and there is no special signification or 31 It seems possible that scholars have conflated the old neighborhood of Dergnau in the city of Lille with aspects of Dergneau, Belgium, a village about 30 kilometers east of Lille. Two kilometers south of the village is the Chateau d’Anvaing, a castle whose foundations were laid during the first crusade. This could be the castle to which Petersen- Dyggve and Guesnon referred. 32 Guesnon, Nouvelles Rescherches, 24. 33 Ibid., 24. 34 Édouard Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l'église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille, vol. 1 (Paris: A. Picard, 1894); and Société d’Études de la Province de Cambrai, Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Marquette, vol. 1 (Lille: Secrétariat de la Société, 1937). 25 title related to him.35 He writes two charter entries in the first person in 1218 (they may or may not have been dictated, but they are in his voice either way), and in the same year countess Jeanne refers to him as her beloved witness.36 In 1224, she again lists him as a witness in legal proceedings, this time specifically singling him out “among many others.”37 These sources construct an image of Philippe as a privileged member of the countess’s circle, and if he was not an advisor, then he was at least a trusted source of information. This suggests that the Dergnau family must have had some power and wealth. Beginning late in 1224, the title of knight is attached to his name in several of the cartulary entries, including a long, personal declaration of his plans for a chaplaincy. His chaplaincy, established in his house in “Verlenghehem,” is worth twelve pounds of Flemish coin, and he writes the entry to explain how he has increased revenue, hoping to make the chaplaincy worth fifteen pounds annually.38 Philippe continues to show up in documents until 1238.39 And, as the century progresses, we see Philippe de Dergnau achieving higher and higher social status. 35 Charles Duvivier, Actes et Document Anciens Intéressant la Belgique (Bruxelles: P. Weissenbruch, 1903), 354. Part of the end of the entry reads, “Hec sunt nomina eorum sub quorum testimonio res ista celebrata est… Signum Philippi Dergnau.” On page 353, Duvivier says that the original entry is from the first cartulary of the Abbey of Marchiennes in Lille. 36 “Testes dilecti et fideles mei Sibilla,domina de Waurin; Hellinus de Waurin, patruus; Philippepus de Dergnau, et Walterus de Somerghem.” See Hautcoeur Cartulaire de l'église collégiale, 1:144. The two entries Philippe transcribed are recorded in an article by Charles Duvivier, which is about the tithe in the Middle Ages. The entries occur on page 207, and are said to come from the “Cartulaire, etc.”; when looking at the beginning of the set on page 204, it is clear that this is the Cartulary of the Bishop of Tournai. See Duvivier, “La dîme au Moyen Age. Correspondance de Jeanne de Constantinople au sujet de la dîme de Vlissegem,” Revue d'Histoire et d'Archéologie 2 (1860): 204, 207. 37 “Ad hoc euocati testes fuerunt fideles mei Arnulphus de Adenarda, Barbenchione, Formesellis, Sotenghem, Eustachius Flandrie camararius, Philippepus de Dergnau, Lobiis et plures alii.” See Véronique Lambert, De oorkonden van het Sint-Donatiaanskapittel te Brugge (9de eeuw-1300), (Brussels: Koninklijke commissie voor geschiedenis, 2008), 130. The original is a single piece of parchment with the seal of the countess of Flanders. 38 “Ego Philippus de Dergnau, miles, notum facio omnibus presentes litteras inspecturis, quod ego diuine intuitu pietatis constitui capellaniam quamdam in domo mea de Verlenghehem.” See Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l'église collégiale, 1:178-179. 39 In 1238, he is first in a list of many noblemen related to the cession of goods by Jeanne de Aardenburg (a daughter and heir) for the foundation of a monastery near Kortrijk. See Louis Galesloot, “Cinq chartes inédites de l'empereur Baudouin de Constantinople, du mois de février 1204-1205,” Compte-rendu des Séances de la Commission royale d'Histoire 4, no. 3 (1876): 154. Galesloot says the entry comes from a vidimus of a charter for the Count and countess of Flanders, 152. A vidimus was a copy of a legal document that bore official seals to confirm its 26 The image of the Dergnau family expands as we consider Jean de Dergnau, who is always listed with his wife Beatrice. Jean and Beatrice are listed in 1236 as donors of a tithe to the Abbey of Marquette.40 The record of the donation is transcribed three times in the cartulary: first, the abbess confirms the actions she will take to return the favor; second, the countess of Flanders confirms the donation; and third, the bishop of Tournai confirms the donation.41 The tithe, which was an obligation set upon citizens to donate part of their yearly wealth to the church, was levied on two parishes in Lille: Saint Sauveur and Saint Maurice.42 As mentioned above, Saint Maurice is just south of the Porte de Dergnau, while Saint Sauveur is a kilometer to the southeast. Since Jean and Beatrice acquired tithes from the neighborhood called Dergnau, and since their surname was Dergnau, they were presumably local landowners. We cannot be certain exactly how Jean and Philippe were related, but they were most likely father and son. The Société d’Études de la Province de Cambrai explains in a footnote that a number of Dergnau family members succeeded in the seigneurie of Verlinghem, citing a Philippe de Verlinghem and a Jean de Verlinghem. At the same time, the Societé indicates that there is no concrete evidence to prove that they were the same people as Philippe de Dergnau and Jean de Dergnau.43 There is, however, potential to link them by observing the highly unusual spellings used in three cartulary entries, two by Philippe himself. In his 1224 statement about the authenticity. See “Vidimus,” Middle English Compendium Dictionary, last modified November 2019, accessed March 24, 2022, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english- dictionary/dictionary/MED51119#:~:text=Definitions%20(Senses%20and%20Subsenses),Show%202%20Quotation s. 40 Société d’Études de la Province de Cambrai, Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Marquette, 1:76-79. The countess confirms that the Knight of Dergneau donated this tithe, but since Beatrice de Dergnau is also cited, we know that it was Jean rather than Philippe. 41 Ibid., 76 and 78-79. 42 Ibid., 79. 43 “Succeeded” in the sense that they inherited the land and took over titles. “Bien que… plusieurs membres de la famille de Dergnau se soient succédé au XIIIe s. dans la seigneurie de Verlinghem, nous ne pouvons, faute de prevue complete, identifier Jean de Dergnau, époux d’une Béatrix, avec Jean de Verlinghem qui vivait à cette époque et qui, à la mort de son père Philippe, fut Jean I, seigneur de Verlinghem.” See ibid., 78. 27 chaplaincy in his house in Verlinghem, Philippe uses the unusual spelling “Verlenghehem.” He says, “I, Philippe of Dergnau, knight, certify to all who shall inspect the present letter, that I, with a view to divine piety, have established a certain chaplaincy in my house of Verlenghehem.”44 Earlier, in 1219, a knight also named Philippe uses the same spelling in reference to himself, “I, Philippe of Verlenghehem,” as he writes a long entry to explain the various duties of clergy in a chapel he has founded in a church in Verlinghem, including his wife’s name, Hawide, in the declaration.45 It is important that his wife’s name is included in the documents, because it makes the possibility that Philippe was Maroie’s husband unlikely, and it adds a potential familial relation to Maroie’s circle. The fact that the same cartulary contains self-authored entries by two Philippes who were both knights, who both established chapels in Verlinghem within a five-year period, and who both used the same unusual spelling “Verlenghehem” would certainly suggest that these are, in fact, the same person. Twenty years later, in 1244, Jean de Verlenghehem—again the unusual spelling—is chastised in the cartulary of the Abbey of Marquette for mistreating tenants.46 This is the same cartulary that contains the entries confirming Jean de Dergnau’s right to donate tithes (which were collected from tenants) to the abbey. All around, the documents seem to mention two individuals, likely a father and a son, sometimes called “de Dergnau” and at other times “de Verlinghem” / “de Verlenghehem.” Though we do not know the birth or death dates for either of these men, Jean de Dergnau does have an obit in a necrology from the collegiate church of St. Pierre in Lille, where we also find Maroie de Dergnau’s name. 44 “Ego Philippus de Dergnau, miles, notum facio omnibus presentes litteras inspecturis, quod ego diuine intuitu pietatis constitui capellaniam quamdam in domo mea de Verlenghehem, duodecim librarum Flandrensis monete.” See Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l'église collégiale, 1:178-179. 45 “Ego Philippus de Verlenghehem, miles, notum facio omnibus presentes litteras inspecturis quod ego et dilecta uxor mea Hawidis, pro animarum nostrarum salute et antecessorum nos-trorum indulgentils peccatorum, in ecclesia de Verlenghehem.” See ibid., 148. 46 Société d’Études de la Province de Cambrai, Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Marquette, 1:102. 28 Obits The necrology from St. Pierre contains obits, which is where we get the modern term obituary, from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, and among them we find an obit for Jean de Dergnau himself and one that mentions Maroie de Dergnau. Obits were official records of how wealthy people wanted money that they had donated to the church to be used, and they were founded using the system of medieval rent. Rather than the tenant paying their landlord an agreed-upon sum each month, the tenant would purchase rent from the landlord and receive a certain amount back each month.47 The tenant wasn’t necessarily the person living in the space; rather, people could purchase rent like an investment.48 The benefit of the process was that wealthy individuals could invest in rent and then transfer the ownership of that rent to churches. Once the Church owned the rent, the landlord would send payments to the Church rather than the person who originally bought the rent. The original purchaser would give the Church the rent so long as they promised to do a set of rituals—catered to or chosen by that original purchaser—like masses and prayers every year on the day the individual chose. Since these funds would almost always be transferred to the church while the individual in the obit was still alive, many obits do not contain the death dates of the people who established those obits, which is the case for Jean de Dergnau’s obit. So, while we have plenty of obits to examine, a concrete timeline cannot be established directly from obits. There are, however, other things that can be observed in obits, like what people valued most in their religious lives and the names associated with the parish. Jean de Dergnau’s obit is one of five listed on one day of the year, which is followed by the stipulation, “All of these obits have been 47 Barbara Haggh-Huglo, “The Aldermen’s Registers as Sources for the History of Music in Ghent,” in La la la… Maistre Henri, ed. Christine Ballman and Valérie Dufour (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 34. 48 Ibid., 34. 29 assigned to buy wood from the castle in Lille, like the wood at the end of this book.” 49 It appears that Jean either did not request any special services or that he purchased an obit with a set sum of money rather than a monthly income provided by rent. The obit that contains Maroie de Dergnau’s name isn’t an obit for Maroie herself, but one for Elizabet de Warenghien. The entry is listed on the feast day of Mary Magdalene, July 22nd, and it reads, “One mark of fine silver on the house of the late Lotini de Warenghien and Marie de Diergnau, in the large forum, on Christmas and Saint John’s. Third part to the chaplains and clerics.” 50 This obit describes the way that Elizabeth de Warenghien wanted her rent money to be used. She desired the money be divided into three parts: one to fund activities (presumably in her chapel) on Christmas, one to fund them on Saint John’s feast day, and the third to fund chaplains and clerics performing these prayers and masses. The money would come from rent payments on the house of the late Lotinus de Warenghien—presumably one of her relatives— and Marie (Maroie) de Dergnau.51 This obit raises a number of questions about her identity, mostly because of ambiguity in translation. “Quondam,” or “late” (dead) clearly refers to Lotinus, but does it also refer to Maroie? Was the house once Lotinus’s possession but had passed into Maroie’s possession at the time of the obit? Could it be that she was a Warenghien, by birth or by marriage? This raises the same question about the name we find in music manuscripts: was she born a Dergnau, or was that a name she took upon marriage? If she married someone from the Dergnau family, it could be that he is the last Dergnau mentioned in the necrology, an E. de Dergnau who is cited as the 49 “Omnes hii obitus assignati sunt supra nemus emptum a castellano Insulensi, ut in fine libri.” See Édouard Hautcoeur, Documents liturgiques et nécrologiques de l'église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille (Paris: A. Picard, 1895), 142. 50 “Duplex. Obitus domicelle Elizabet de Warenghien. I marcham fini argenti supra domum quondam Lotini de Warenghien et Marie de Diergnau, in Magno Foro, in Natali et sancto Johanne. Tertia pars capellanis et clericis.” See ibid., 169. 51 Marie is a Latinate spelling of Maroie, and we have seen that Dergnau can be spelled many ways. 30 owner of a house in front of which there are two new homes that are producing rent for the obit of Nicholas of St. Maurice.52 Nicholas was alive in 1251, which would place E. de Dergnau in the correct period.53 One more obit provides another piece to the puzzle, connecting the Dergnau family with the Warenghiens. Elizabet de Warenghien has another obit from the feast of St. Gregory on the 12th of March. Hautcoeur leaves a footnote about her under his transcription, where he indicates that she was the sister of the bishop of Tournai, Michel de Warenghien, and that she founded a chaplaincy at the altar of Notre Dame de la Treille (a parish church in Lille) in 1305.54 Elizabet’s obit donates all the lands in Chevalerie near Frelenghien to the church. Frelenghien is a faubourg from which either Jean or Philippe de Dergnau was allowed to collect tithes for the Church in 1236 and 1237.55 The two families to which Maroie is connected therefore have power over adjacent lands. The obit also puts Maroie into contact with powerful ecclesiastical figures, since the sister of a bishop is collecting rents on a house with which Maroie is connected. Conclusion The information found in cartularies and obits from Lille tells us a great deal about who Maroie de Dergnau was associated with, her social standing, and where she lived. From the records about Philippe, we know that he was a powerful member of the countess’s circle, and he was active during the time that Maroie was probably born. While we cannot be sure that he was 52 “Obitus Nicholai de sancto Mauricio1, presbiteri et canonici. 1 marcam, dimid. firt., v los fini argenti, et II capones. Inde debentur supra duas domos novas ante domum domini E. de Diergnau.” See Hautcoeur, Documents liturgiques et nécrologiques, 181. 53 Hautcoeur says that he is mentioned in 1251. See ibid., 181. 54 “Depositio sancti Gregorii, pape. IX lect. Obitus domicelle Elizabet de Warenghien1, cujus obitui cedunt X(E)(L)(K)(?) sol. sumendi supra totas terras de le Chevalerie, apud Frelenghien,” and fn. 1, “Soeur de l’évêque de Tournai, Michel de Warenghien. Elle fonda en 1305 une chapellenie à l’autel de N.-D. de la Treille.” See ibid., 143. 55 Hautcoeur, Cartulaire de l’eglise collégiale, 1:234-235. 31 her father, if she was indeed born into the Dergnau family then he may have been, and her mother may have been Hawide, his wife. Jean de Dergnau was alive throughout the same period as Maroie, but as he had a wife named Beatrice, it is likely that he was not Maroie’s husband. He could have been either Maroie’s brother or her brother-in-law, if she was married to the other figure mentioned in the necrology, E. de Dergnau (if they were indeed a man). We know that she was connected to the Warenghien family, who had significant ecclesiastical power. She could have been the wife of Lotinus de Warenghien, but I have unfortunately been unable to locate any more documentation on him. Regardless, as a member of a wealthy noble family, Maroie would have had access to more education than many other women of the time.56 An education in language or literature would boost the writing skills she certainly utilized in music. No matter her exact position within these families, we know that she was at the center of Lillois society, and we can infer her lifespan based on the dates associated with her connections. Andrieu de Contredit (the trouvère who addressed Maroie in a song, as discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 2) died in 1248, so Maroie must have been in adulthood by then. Her connection with the Warenghiens, however, shows that she could not have been especially far into adulthood. Michel de Warenghien was bishop of Tournai from 1284-1291, and this would have been late in his life.57 This would put his likely birthdate around the middle of the century, meaning that Elizabet would also have been born around then. To be mentioned in the obits of people who lived this late in the century, Maroie could not have been born much earlier than the late 1220s. Since she was in adulthood, writing and performing poetry by the time Andrieu de Contredit died in 1248, she could also not have been born much later than the 1220s. It stands to 56 William J. Courtenay, Rituals for the Dead: Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 82-86. 57 Thomas Paul, “Warenghien (Camille de) — Un prélat au XIIIe siècle. Michel de Warenghien, évêque de Tournai, de 1284 à 1291, 1919,” Revue du Nord 6, no. 21 (February 1920): 49-52. 32 reason, based on the thirteenth-century dating evidence examined here, that Maroie was probably born around 1225. In this chapter, I have presented evidence that establishes a base to build upon as we continue to learn about the identity of Maroie de Dergnau. She had high status in Lille, coming from a powerful, wealthy, privileged family, and she lived across the middle of the century during the height of trouvère activity and chansonnier transcription. Just like the other identified female trouvères, Blanche de Castille and the Duchesse de Lorraine, she would have received a top-notch education—one that taught her to write and debate. She was probably a landowner since she is mentioned in connection to a house in the grand place. Considering that her chanson was written down by a scribe who did not notate the songs around it in MS M, she and her song were probably well-known. Looking at all the evidence, it is apparent that further research can be done on Maroie’s identity, with future lines of inquiry investigating the Warenghiens, E. de Dergnau, and the neighborhood in which their family lived. Not only does the discovery of the evidence presented in this chapter contribute to our understanding of Maroie, but it also confirms that there is a wealth of documentation to mine for information about trouvères in general, especially the half that has been historically neglected. 33 CHAPTER 2: Great Is the Pleasure: Double Meaning and Response in two Chansons d’Amours Introduction Although many chansons d’amours survive in trouvère manuscripts, only four of these are written in a feminine voice. The only extant chanson d’amour attributed to a named woman author is Mout m’abelist (RS 1451), credited to Maroie de Dergnau. This work can be analyzed in a number of different ways musically and textually, even though only one stanza with notation survives. Close textual readings that take into account the many possible translations of certain words and an examination of the music reveal two meanings, both subversive, hiding beneath the surface of the song. In fact, an analysis that takes stock of the connection between the music and text of Mout m’abelist—not just one or the other—shows that these aspects mutually highlight the song’s double meanings. Furthermore, there are important connections between Mout m’abelist and Andrieu de Contredit’s chanson d’amour Bonne, belle, et avenant (RS 262), for Andrieu’s piece addresses not only Maroie as a person but also her song itself. In this chapter, I will first give a broad overview of the participation of anonymous women in chansons d’amours, exploring how their words challenge the masculine voice’s portrayal of women, particularly the female stock character called la Dame. Moving into an analysis of Mout m’abelist, I delve into the translation of the song and its twin messages, following up with an analysis of its music to show the ways it emphasizes the multiple meanings. Next, I will juxtapose Maroie’s lyrics with those of Andrieu de Contredit, examining his reply. I 34 will consider the ways that the two songs interact and overlap, suggesting that chansons d’amours may have had a dialogic function that has yet to be explored.1 Chansons d’Amours: Convention and Divergence The chanson d’amour genre is characterized by a narrator’s exaltation of the socially superior and unattainable woman, “la Dame.” She is praised for her beauty and grace while the narrator demeans himself, explaining that he is not worthy of her attentions. La Dame’s attitude towards the narrator is cold and uninterested, and the subject of the song details his acceptance of suffering in the face of her rejection.2 Singers intended this story to depict courtliness; that is, masculine narrators placed themselves in situations that showcased their prowess and proficiency in courtly love.3 This masculine-voiced narration that emphasized the man’s competence in fin amours is the distinguishing element of the genre.4 There are four extant feminine-voiced chansons d'amours, and these women’s very participation in a genre centered around masculinity creates a narrative that is inherently contrary to the normal definition of the genre. Women narrators of chansons d’amours embody the stock character of la Dame, reversing the masculine-centered story told by nearly all extant works in this genre. Rather than passively exalting, valorizing, and accepting unrequited desire like the masculine narrators, women narrators are explicit in their anger and regret, disclose their personal motives and concerns, and even discuss social pressures that may have prevented the 1 For a detailed explanation of the conception of the genre as a stand-alone, “functionless” (33) art form, see Helen Dell, Desire by Gender and Genre (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 23-36 and 95. 2 Ibid., 12-15 and 53-60. 3 One example can be found in Christopher Page, “Listening to the Trouvères,” Early Music 25, no. 4 (1997): 639- 640. Additionally, Rachel Ruisard has argued that trouvère music shows that the concept of prowess was paramount to men’s honor, see Ruisard, “Women’s Voices in a Fourteenth-Century Chansonnier: Representation and Performance in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308” (PhD Diss., University of Maryland, 2021), 68, 275-310. 4 Dell, Desire by Gender, 69-95. 35 romance. As one trouvère sings, “I never dared reveal the truth: I feared the ignominy caused by slanderers.”5 In their depictions of la Dame as a feeling human being, they protest la Dame’s portrayal as blasé, nonchalant, and cruel. None of these four chansons d’amours survive in their complete forms. Songs in this genre are typically five stanzas with a shorter stanza tagged onto the end, called an “envoi,” or envoy, which dedicates the song to someone or something.6 There are no surviving envoys from chansons d’amours by women, and only one of the four existing chansons d’amours has been preserved with all five stanzas.7 Mout m’abelist has one stanza, Onqes n’amai tant que jou fui amee (RS 498) has three, Plaine d’ire et de desconfort (RS 1934) has three, and La froidor ne la jalee (RS 517) survives with all five stanzas.8 Within the group, there is also significant contrast in lines per stanza and the use of rhyme scheme; all four songs differ in their stanza length, and each has a different rhyme scheme (see Table 2.1). Mout m’abelist is, of course, attributed to Maroie, La froidor is attributed to “une dame” in its source, and the others are anonymous.9 While three of the songs survive with music, La froidor was transcribed without it.10 So, none of these pieces are recorded with all their information, since most are textually incomplete, and one is musically incomplete. To understand the ideological challenges these songs and their authors pose to the genre it is important to consider the paradoxical characteristics of la Dame as spoken through the 5 Eglal Doss Quinby, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubrey, Songs of the Women Trouvères (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 120. 6 Ibid., 114. 7 For my analyses I use the editions recorded in Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 114-123. 8 For La froidor see ibid., 114-116; for Mout m’abelist see ibid., 116-118; for Onqes n’amai see ibid., 119-121; and for Plaine d’ire see ibid., 122-124. 9 There has been some disagreement about whether Onqes n’amai was written by Richard de Fournival, a popular trouvère, see ibid., 121. 10 Transcriptions of the music are in ibid., 118, 119, and 122. 36 masculine voice. La Dame may represent a real or imagined woman, but both are idealized.11 When information regarding her identity is available, it is usually given by the envoy.12 The most notable characteristic of la Dame is that she is completely silent.13 As the “ideal” woman, La Dame is totally unattainable, possesses otherworldly beauty, is emotionally unavailable, discerning, and powerful.14 To satisfy the genre’s goal to make the masculine singer appear to be the most worthy lover, the subject of desire, la Dame, must also be of the greatest worth.15 But, because she is constructed as unattainable and necessarily rejects the lover, the harm that she causes through her uncaring attitude makes her less worthy of the perfect, courtly lover.16 The stock character is by nature a paradox and sets unrealistic expectations for women. Table 2.1: Chansons d’amours in women’s voices Song Stanzas surviving Lines per stanza Rhyme Scheme Lines before rhyme change Mout m’abelist One Seven ABABBAA Four (RS 1451) La froidor ne la Five Ten ABABABABBA Eight jalee (RS 517) Onqes n’amai Three Nine ABABAACAC Five tant que jou fui amee (RS 498) Plaine d’ire et de Three Eight ABABBAAB Four desconfort (RS AAAAAAAA n/a 1934) ABABBAAB Four 11 Samuel Rosenberg, “The ‘Envoi’ in Trouvère Lyric, with Particular Attention to the Songs of Gace Brulé,” Romance Philology 58, no. 1 (2004): 54. 12 There are exceptions, namely in songs where the woman is named in the very first few lines. For example, De belle Yzabel Ferai (R 81) names the recipient of the song in the first line. See Deborah Hubbard Nelson and Hendrik van der Werf, The Songs Attributed to Andrieu Contredit d’Arras (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), 53-58. 13 Dell, Desire by Gender, 61 and 93-95. 14 See Kathryn Gravdal, “Mimicry, Metonymy, and ‘Women’s Song’: the Medieval Woman Trobairitz,” Romantic Review 83, no. 4 (1992): 412. Although she is referring to the Domna of the troubadour corpus, this character was the origin of the trouvère’s la Dame. See also ibid., 12. 15 Dell, Desire by Gender, 80. 16 Ibid., 12. 37 The feminine voices of chansons d’amours resituate la Dame to contrast with the parameters set by masculine voices. Most notably, their songs give a first-hand account of the usually ambiguous or non-existent perspective of the literary lady. The narrator of Onqes n’amai describes herself thinking, “Now Love has dealt me a cruel blow when it grants to another the one I love but does not let me stop thinking of him.”17 This, an explicit reference to her own thought process and the influence upon it, is not congruent with the masculine voice’s Dame. She is certainly not mindless in La froidor, where the author references both madness and cleverness.18 The feminine voice paints her own portrait, embodying the stock character but granting her emotion and dignity, releasing her from the confines of masculine vocality. The author of La froidor checks the portrayal of la Dame as emotionally cold right out of the gate, saying, “Neither cold nor frost can chill my body, so much has his love enflamed me.”19 In Plaine d’ire, the narrator is “full of anger,” and she rejects the depiction of la Dame as virginal: “I was much too bold when I made moan with heart and mouth at anything joyful.”20 The author of Onqes n’amai also opposes this image, saying, “Dear Lord God, he would have kissed and embraced me then, and lain with me.”21 Women authors reintroduce agency to la Dame while managing to express the ways that their power may have been limited. La froidor’s author describes how the figure of Love, as a character itself (Amors), has “incited” her to fall for someone, only devoting her “whole being to serving him” after being possessed by Amors.22 In Onqes n’amai, she makes a choice to refrain 17 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 120. 18 Ibid., 115. 19 Ibid., 114. 20 Ibid., 123. 21 Ibid., 120. 22 Ibid., 115. 38 from admitting her love for her suitor out of fear of social repercussions but later explains that she, too, cannot stop thinking of her beloved because Amors will not permit it. These women claim their agency, but they also express the ways that a larger power—Love/Amors—has control over their lives. In this way, their versions of the chanson d’amour reframe la Dame. Meaning in Mout m’abelist Without more than one stanza, assessing exactly how Maroie’s song Mout m’abelist compares to other women’s chansons d’amours is relatively tricky. Additionally, as I will explain, the text, while appearing straightforward, is built upon a double meaning (see Figure 2.1).23 An initial, casual look at the text of Mout m’abelist sets a happy maiden in the colder months of the year, encouraging herself to be joyful and not to let wintertime diminish her cheerfulness. Maroie’s words take on an element of humor when contextually analyzed. Contrasted with both social norms for women and the masculine voice’s conventions outlined above, they overflow with zesty, flirtatious sarcasm. Figure 2.1: Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) lyrics and translation Mout m’abelist quant je voi revenir Great is the pleasure I take upon the return Yver, gresill et gelee aparoir, of winter, when hail and frost appear, Car en toz tans se doit bien resjoïr for in every season a lovely maiden Bele pucele, et joli cuer avoir. Must indeed rejoice and have a cheerful heart. Si chanterai d’amors por mieuz valoir, So I will sing of love to increase my ardor, Car mes fins cuers plains d’amorous desir For my true heart full of amorous desire Ne mi fait pas ma grant joie faillir. Will not let my great joy falter. 23 Figure 2.1 is the translation from Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 118. 39 Maroie’s opening couplet is a cue that this song requires the listener to think critically of what they hear and how the message can shift to and from various meanings, both anticipated and unanticipated. The first two lines are a nature opening and while it not unusual, its subversion of expectation instantly signifies that the message of a particular song may not be as straightforward as it seems. Nature openings typically associate the warmer months and seasons with love, while winter specifically is associated with unrequited love, rejection, or the like. Occasionally, songs with nature openings will switch these associations, saying for example that freezing weather only makes the lover appreciate their love even more, that spring reminds them of their lost beloved’s fresh and rosy cheeks, and so on.1 Jennifer Saltzstein refers to this as the “reverse nature opening” and has analyzed the demographics of this type of reversal.2 Very specific, carefully chosen language plays an important role in this song’s communication of multiple meanings at once. For example, while it is typical to refer to the revered woman in a chanson d’amour with the highly respectful “la Dame,” Maroie uses, “bele pucele,” or “pretty maiden” (“pucele” can also refer to a virgin).3 Although the masculine voice sets la Dame, the stock character, as virginal, the specific wording used here is not a common way to refer to a noblewoman. It is diminutive in style, much more usual in genres where women are portrayed by men as physical fixtures for the taking, rather than as aristocrats.4 This word choice calls up the imagery of pastourelles and the chanson d’ami, genres of trouvère song that are regarded as much more sexually deviant in tone. 1 Jennifer Saltzstein, “Songs of Nature in Medieval Northern France: Landscape, Identity, and Environment,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 1 (April 2019): 115-116. 2 According to Saltzstein, the standard nature opening is more common of aristocratic trouvères who would have spent significant time in the countryside, and the reverse opening is common among clerical trouvères and those based in cities. This discussion occurs throughout her article. See ibid., 115-180. 3 Alan Hindley, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy, Old French-English Dictionary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 73, 502. 4 As Dell writes, “It is she—the femme of low-style, not the dame of high—who is made small by diminutives.” Dell, Desire by Gender, 47. 40 There is a significant amount of scholarly debate over the validity of “registral” distinction in trouvère song, or the idea that there is a hierarchy of categorizing songs that are not sexual as courtlier and therefore “high style.”5 Within the hierarchy, songs that are considered to be “high-style” make references to “low-style” songs to allude to sexual topics. Scholars see these sexual messages as registral play.6 While genres like the chanson d’amour are considered “high-style,” pastourelles and the chanson d’ami are part of a larger composite of genres that is seen as “low-style.”7 Scholars often subscribe to or critique Pierre Bec’s suggested registral categories of “aristocratisant,” which would translate to “ennobling,” meaning that the songs in that register increase courtly stature; and “populairisant” or “popularizing,” meaning these songs decrease courtly stature.8 Whether or not it is helpful to read into the innuendo in Maroie’s lyrics as a reference to “less” courtly genres, her word choice is playful and clearly sexually indicative. “Joie,” “joïr,” and consequently “resjoïr,” for example, are derivatives of the same word that frequently indicates orgasm and climax.9 The very title of the song, “Mout m’abelist,” can have multiple meanings. “Mout” is a simple word that means “a lot,” “very much,” or “great,” which is simple enough.10 But “abelir,” the reflexive verb conjugated “m’abelist” (where “m’” means “me” or 5 Rachel Ruisard gives a thorough overview; see Ruisard, “Women’s Voices,” 61-66. 6 Ibid., 61-66. 7 Elizabeth Aubrey, “Reconsidering ‘High Style’ and ‘Low Style’ in Medieval Song,” Journal of Music Theory 52, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 80 and 83. Note, however, that Aubrey considers these genres as low-style genres within the broader context of a chanson d’amour, which still retains its higher style. 8 Pierre Bec, La Lyrique française au moyen âge, XIIe -XIIIe siècles: Contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1977), 35; See Dell’s use in Desire by Gender, 32; and the opposition to the conception of register in Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 9. 9 Hindley et al., Old French-English Dictionary, 377, 378 and 529. 10 Ibid., 436; and Doss-Quinby, “Rolan, de ceu ke m’avez / parti dirai mon samblant: The Feminine Voice in the Old French Jeu-Parti,” Neophililogus 83 (1999): 513. 41 “myself”), can be translated several ways. It can mean that someone is adorning themself, making themself more attractive; it can also translate as “to please,” or “to be pleasing.”11 While the authors of the anthology Songs of the Women Trouvères chose to translate the phrase, “Great is the pleasure I take upon the return of winter,” the many possible translations of this phrase can change the meaning and provide more focus.12 Table 2.2 lists several translations of the word “abelir.” Here, “T” stands for “translation.” While they are all possible, T4 does not make much sense in the context of the rest of the poem. T1 and T2 have the same message, saying that Maroie adorns herself to be more attractive when wintertime rolls around. T3 is similar to the translation from Songs of the Women Trouvères, but this phrasing highlights the sexual undertones that audiences, as vernacular speakers who knew the many meanings of these words, would have picked up on. Table 2.2: Alternate translations of reflexive verb “abelir” in context Translation number Meaning of abelir Used in sentence T1 To make more attractive I make myself more beautiful when I see winter return T2 To adorn I greatly adorn myself when I see winter return T3 To please I please myself greatly when I see winter return T4 To be pleasing [to] I am more pleasing to myself when I see winter return The translation of the first words frames the translation of the entire stanza, creating a dynamic sense of meaning in the text. None of these translations are “better”; they are all 11 Ibid., 3. 12 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 118. 42 possibilities that represent the various ways an audience may have interpreted Maroie’s language. For example, if the opening is interpreted as T3, the rest of the stanza is laden with sexual meaning. In this context, the poem might be translated as, “I please myself greatly when I see winter return, when hail and frost appears, for in every season a pretty maiden must certainly climax and have a cheerful heart. So I will sing of love to increase its value, for my fine heart full of sexual desire will not let my orgasm fail.”13 When the text is understood like this, Maroie makes a declaration of feminine sexual agency. The apparently “clean” version of the text that results from T1 is at the least sarcastic, if not subversive, criticizing the way that the masculine voice treats status in romantic relationships. As Helen Dell has explained, women in masculine narrations are the subject of aggressive sexual desire regardless of their social status.14 Dell briefly points out that the word choice in Mout m’abelist seems to communicate a social imperative to rejoice rather than a desire to be cheerful.15 Maroie’s choice of the words “bele pucele” are a clear departure from generic conventions, referencing “low style” genres and lending the T1 translation a humorous tone. By referring to herself not as a “lady,” but as a “maid,” Maroie renders her courtly status in a courtly genre immaterial, calling attention to the ways that the masculine voice aggrandizes male status while treating women the same regardless of their social standing. She sings of her “amorous desire,” nullifying the masculine voice’s narrative that strips the feminine voice of both its presence and feeling potential. Maroie’s choice of words indicates that she already believes herself to be valuable, but she nonetheless must increase her worth through “adornment,” simply to attract suitors. “Valoir,” translated by the anthology’s editors as 13 I have used the translation from Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 118 as a framework for my alternative translations. 14 See Dell, Desire by Gender, 72-95. 15 Ibid., 185. 43 “ardor,” is more commonly translated as “value” or “worth.”16 If this word changes, the fifth line can be translated, “So I will sing of love to increase my value.” This statement is immediately followed with the proclamation that her heart is “true” or, as fins could also be translated, “noble.”17 Proclaiming that she has a courtly heart is a statement of her existing worth. Recalling that the reverse nature opening signals the need for complex interpretations, it could also be a reference to convention before taking on a thickly sardonic tone that verges on the scornful. These meanings, coded within her language, only come forth by observing the layers of translation that vernacular-speaking audiences could understand. Three interpretations emerge: one basic, one sexual, and one proto-feminist rejection of the chanson d’amour’s conventions. The concepts of masturbation, self-gratification, and intercourse were not foreign concepts to medieval people and were commonly alluded to in other songs that play with generic register.18 There is no reason to believe Maroie would avoid those topics, especially in a game where wit was valued and could also serve as a social safety blanket. Luckily, music for Mout m’abelist survives in both manuscripts, and the melody—nearly the same in each source—reinforces the notions of double meaning in its lyrics. 16 Hindley et al., Old French-English Dictionary, 602. 17 Ibid., 319. 18 Tovi Bibring details aspects of medieval sexuality in “Of Swords and Rings: Genital Representation as Defining Sexual Identity and Sexual Liberation in Some Old French Fabliaux and Lais,” in Genealogies of Identity: Interdisciplinary Readings on Sex and Sexuality, ed. Margaret Sönser Breen and Fiona Peters (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 151-167. For a thorough discussion of homosexuality and intercourse among monks at Notre Dame in the twelfth century, see Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 137-187. For a musical example, the jeux-parti Amis, ki est li muelz vaillant (RS 365) features an anonymous man and an anonymous woman who debate over their preferred contexts for sexual gratification. See Eglal Doss- Quinby, “Rolan,” 510. 44 The Music of Mout m’abelist There is a small but growing body of scholarship on the musical analysis of trouvère song. Philology is dominant in the field, so the poetry of this repertoire has received much more attention than its music.19 Musicological work includes Hans Tischler’s endeavor to create a performable repertoire for modern singers, using poetic meter to determine rhythm.20 Michelle Stewart’s 1979 statistical study worked to understand melodic statistics of the jeu-parti, and recently, Joseph Mason has paved the way for more scholarship on the analysis of jeux-partis melodies.21 Mason’s work is helpful in distinguishing between melodic structure and improvisational process and will be useful in Chapter Three’s analyses. There is also some research on the melodies of troubadour songs, but this is not directly or completely transferrable to what is going on in trouvère melodies.22 Elizabeth Eva Leach has been innovative in building an understanding of trouvère melodies themselves, arguing that the goal is not to write modernized editions of the songs but to establish “a larger field of knowledge.”23 Her approach examines the constituent parts of a melodic line, considering units as small as single notes, to understand how the segments function within the broader structure.24 Leach points out that, as strophic songs, the melody would be heard more than each individual strophe of text, so the repetitive nature of strophic melodies 19 Examples include Wendy Pfeffer, “Attributing Another Song to Maroie de Diergnau,” Textual Cultures 14, no. 2 (2021): 115-133; Joan Tasker Grimbert, “Chrétien the Trouvère: Elements of Jeux-Partis in Cligés,” Faux Titre 361 (2010): 109-123; and Beverly J. Evans, “Women Trouvères: Just the Same Old Refrains?” Neophilologus 90 (2006): 1-11, among others. 20 See Hans Tischler, “Mode, Modulation, and Transposition in Medieval Songs,” The Journal of Musicology 13, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 277-283; and Hans Tischler, Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition, Revisited (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2006). 21 See Joseph Mason, “Structure and Process in the Old French Jeu-Parti,” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 47-79; and Michelle F. Stewart “The Melodic Structure of Thirteenth-Century ‘Jeux-Partis,’” Acta Musicologica 51, no. 1 (January-June 1979): 86-107. 22 For example, Ian R. Parker, “Troubadour and Trouvère Song: Problems in Modal Analysis,” Revue Belge de Musicologie 31 (1977): 20-37. 23 Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?,” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 5. 24 Ibid., 9-10. 45 could make them more memorable. The music recorded in manuscripts might be, therefore, more reliably transcribed as a unit than the poetry.25 Her method is different from other studies in its insistence on allowing the melody to stand on its own, without placing so much weight on how the melodies correspond to the text syllable to syllable.26 By undertaking analysis in this way, we are also able to better understand the artistic elements of a given melody. I will be observing Leach’s methods as a guideline for my analysis. First, I will examine the melody by looking at its large-scale form, then I will look at much smaller units of notes. I will analyze the frons (the first section), and then the cauda (the second section). It is helpful to understand the melody on its own to establish a basis for interpretation, before allowing elements of the text to enter the analysis. Following my exploration of the music, I will consider how the lyrics affect the melody and vice versa. Poetic meters played a part in guiding the rhythms of a given song,27 but here I am more concerned with the sense of unit that meter can create. For Mout m’abelist in particular, metric play can help us distinguish units of melody and text that cause a sense of oscillation. I will use the music presented in MS M as the basis for my discussion, although the melodies in MS M and MS T are almost identical. Mout m’abelist is in pedes cum cauda form, which is a two-part, strophic musical form common within trouvère song.28 Pedes cum cauda is an AAB form, where the first part (the two A sections together) is called the frons, and the second (the B section) is called the cauda. The frons is always four lines, where the melody of lines 1-2 is repeated over new text in lines 3-4.29 The remainder of the song is the cauda, which ranges in length.30 The cauda itself is usually 25 Ibid., 10. 26 Ibid., 4-6. 27 Tischler, “Mode, Modulation,” 278. 28 Mason, “Structure and Process,” 52. 29 Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?,” 10. 30 Ibid., 10; and Mason, “Structure and Process,” 52. 46 through-composed, although it frequently develops ideas from the frons, expanding upon the opening section.31 In Mout m’abelist, the frons is the first four lines, and the cauda is the final three. The tonal center of both sections is G.32 The cauda is through composed, but, as I will show, both sections develop melodic elements in meaningful ways. Throughout this piece, Maroie uses compositional devices to underscore how her text can communicate more than one thing. The song is full of opposites, and they work side by side to create a complete melody, similar to the way that double meanings work together to create a full picture. The frons creates a sense of oscillation, mimicking the way a listener’s mind might move back and forth between Maroie’s textual double meanings. This shifting unsettled melodic character is created in part through strategically devised scalar movement. Phrase 1 (hereafter P1; I will refer to the following lines as P2, P3, etc.) forms three scales. P1 begins on F and ascends to Bb through stepwise motion before returning to F note-by-note once more, and then back to Bb yet again through stepwise motion (see the first line of Figure 2.2). 31 Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?,” 10. 32 While it can be difficult to determine the final of any given song, and while a final can change rather quickly, there is significant emphasis on the pitch G throughout the song. Lines 2, 4, 6, and 7 conclude on G, and since the last line of the frons is a G, it is a strong candidate for the final. A secondary possible final for the song could be the pitch Bb, since lines 1 and 3 conclude there, but the shape of the melody decentralizes Bb, leaving G as the dominant possibility. See Tischler, “Mode, Modulation,” 277-278. 47 Figure 2.2: Music and text of Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) 48 While P1 moves up, then down, then up, P2 moves down, then moves up, evoking a feeling of rocking back and forth. P2 immediately begins with two three-note turns, A-Bb-A and G-F-G (see Figure 2.3). The middle note of both turns is a neighbor tone, and when removed, the first half of P2 is another stepwise scale. The phrase then falls three notes to D, jumps back to F, and ends on G-A-G. This second half of P2 is not strictly stepwise, but the general motion of the line is an upward scale. Since these lines are repeated over P3 and P4, the entire frons is constantly shifting between upward and downward motion. Figure 2.3: Reduction of P2 into base scale Maroie divides the phrases into clean, distinct groups of three and two, furthering the back-and-forth feeling. These segmentations have the effect of spinning between a triple and duple feeling, which is again emphasized by the repeats of these elements in P3 and P4. P1’s melody, with its three stepwise scales, can easily be split into three parts, with points of separation happening where the first Bb switches the direction of the scale and where the second F switches it again (see Figure 2.4). In contrast, P2 is made of two sections, not three. When the embellishments are removed, there are 10 notes per line, so the medial tone of each line (the note 49 that occurs halfway through the phrase) should be located on the sixth non-ornamental note.33 P2 uses D as a clear halfway point, and the line—as it is reduced in Examples 2.1 and 2.2—is divisible into two sections. Since D is also the lowest note in the song, the location and depth of the medial tone emphasizes the division of P2 into two parts each. Although the Bb on the “-nir” of “revenir” is at the end of the first line, it serves as a connecting point between P1 and P2. If this Bb is bumped onto the beginning of the reduced P2, the two halves of the line each have five notes, while P2 is left with nine, or three notes per scale. Figure 2.4: Divisions of the scales in frons Within these areas, she goes even further to create opposites. The ascending scales and descending scales are simple in P1 and P3. They work within the same range before flourishing with embellishments in P2 and P4, falling dramatically to a lower register (see Figure 2.5). In P2 and P4, the descent to D contrasts dramatically with the ascent back up, as the fall of the scale is elongated with ornamentation, while the rise of the scale is made exceedingly shorter with the first leap, a third, immediately following the D (see Figure 2.6). 33 Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?,” 11. 50 Figure 2.5: Simplicity of P1 scales, embellishments in P2 scale Figure 2.6: Contrast in length between first and second halves of P2 Adding poetic meter to the discussion of the frons expands the notion that multiple themes can be observed working simultaneously in the song. Looking at syllabic stresses in the text helps us better understand the unstable, shifting feeling of the melody, consequently furthering our understanding of the double meanings. P1 and P3 are dactylic, meaning that their syllables are arranged in groups of three, where the first syllable is stressed and the second two unstressed (see Table 2.3). Because the syllables of these lines are grouped into three groups of three, the triple feeling of the phrases is enhanced. P2 and P4, on the other hand, are written in 51 iambs, or syllabic groups of two where syllable one is unstressed and syllable two is stressed. Again, this represents a reversal of compositional strategy line-to-line: three syllables per group, then two per group. There is also a reversal in the location of the stressed syllable within the group (underlined in the third column of Table 2.3), since dactyls have an initial stress and the stress in iambs is secondary. Table 2.3: Types of syllabic stress in Mout m’abelist Type Syllables in Group Stress order Iamb 2 weak—strong Trochee 2 strong—weak Dactyl 3 strong—weak—weak So far, we have seen how Maroie strategized with melodic content in the frons to pair an oscillating melody with oscillating meaning, using spinning scales, switching the division of phrases from 2 to 3 and back again, and alternating a triple-duple feeling of syllabic content line- to-line. The unsettled melodic character of the frons matches the text’s changeable meanings. Maroie uses similar techniques in the cauda to emphasize her message. The tonal centers Maroie uses in the cauda show how easily one tone can be superseded by another, representing the ease with which a listener can find layers of textual meaning. P5 begins in the same tonal center as the frons—which centers G—but quickly moves into a different area, queued where P5 ends on A, the first line of the melody to do so. The following line, P6, functions with final A, one step up, effectually obscuring the overall tonal center of the song before P7 works back into tonal center G. In this diversion from G to A, A seems to hide G just beneath the surface. 52 The cauda also opposes the frons by using redirected scales, yet another way that Maroie signals a flip from meaning to meaning. P5 continues the scale motif that was introduced by the frons, but instead of starting on F and ascending to Bb, it reverses the order of scale direction. It begins on Bb, moving downwards to F, Bb-A-G-F (see Figure 2.7). Then, that scale is mirrored exactly, moving upwards, F-G-A-Bb. So, while the opening of the frons moves up first, the opening of the cauda, P5, moves down first. The second line of the frons, P2, moves down first, then up, but the second line of the cauda, P6, does the opposite yet again (see Figure 2.8). Figure 2.7: Reversal of opening scales from frons to cauda (P1 to P5) 53 Figure 2.8: Reversal of scales from P2 to P6 Poetic meters in the cauda serve as another way to create a sense of spinning. Figure 2.9 shows how each line is divided into syllabic groups, and the stressed syllables in those groups are written in bold, red font. In P5, Maroie uses a dactyl followed by four trochees. P6 starts with a trochee, followed by an iamb, a trochee, and two more iambs. P7 is broken down into two dactyls, a trochee, and an iamb. There are several spots where trochees are followed by iambs, where a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables acts similarly to a dactyl. In these moments, the sense of duple meter is overwritten by a sense of triple meter. In Figure 2.10, dactyls—triple groups—are highlighted in yellow, while trochees—duple groups—are highlighted in green, and syllables that are left singular are highlighted in blue. The markings from Figure 2.3 are left in for reference of overlap. In both figures, there are several moments of alternation between metric varieties, where triplet meters jam against duplet meters. These changes overhaul a sense of congruity in the poetic meter and create layers of rhythmic feeling. Again, Maroie mirrors the double meanings in her text through the use of structural elements. 54 Figure 2.9: Poetic meter in the cauda P5: “Si chan-” “te-rai “d’a-mors” “por mieuz” “va-loir,” P6: “cars mes” “fins cuer” “plain d’a-” “-mo-rous” “de-sir” P7: “ne me fait,” “pas ma grant” “joi-e” “fai-llir” Figure 2.10: Duple and triple overlap in the cauda P5: “Si chan-” “te-rai “d’a-mors” “por mieuz” “va-loir,” P6: “cars mes” “fins cuer” “plain d’a-” “-mo-rous” “de-sir” P7: “ne me fait,” “pas ma grant” “joi-e” “fai-llir” While melody and poetic meter assisted Maroie in her creation of a spinning feeling within the song, it also assisted her in highlighting one of its most important textual features, the diminutive phrase “bele pucele.” Maroie disrupts the congruity of the poetic meter and melodic line to use this phrase, which suggests that, despite the fact that “bele pucele” was always already an unusual choice, the song could not do without it. As a single unit, “bele pucele” has four syllables, and they can be split into a trochee followed by an iamb (see Table 2.3). But the wording and stress is different in each manuscript, since the insertion of an extra word, “et,” changes the pronunciation and stress of the diminutive phrase. In MS T, the text is “bele pucele joli” (see Figure 2.11) and would be read “be-le” “pu-ce-le”; in MS M, the text is “bele pucele et” (see Figure 2.12) and would be read “be-le” “pu-cele.” In both sources, the arrangement of the melody puts two notes over the “-le” in bele, so the “-le” is stressed by the music, even 55 though the syllable is meant to be unstressed (see line four of Figure 2.3). This placement undermines the structure of the poetic meter, displacing the stress to the second syllable rather than the first. Additionally, in MS T, the musical emphasis on the “-le” in “bele” makes the “be-” sound like a pickup to a triplet, where the “-le pu-” has three notes. The following two syllables are afforded two notes each, making those syllables sound like duples. This change from triple to duple also brings out the words. All around, the shifting qualities on “bele pucele” foreground the sexually charged phrase and its status as registral play. Figure 2.11: “Bele pucele” note distribution in MS T Figure 2.12: “Bele pucele” variance in MS M 56 Maroie also composed the cauda in opposition to the frons itself. For example, the frons has mostly compact scales, while the cauda has mostly expansive ones. The frons has a repetitive melody, and the cauda is through composed. The contrasting essence of the pedes cum cauda form serves as basic evidence of double meaning using a contrasting structure. My suggestion that Maroie’s text has two meanings—one sexually explicit and one that subversively complains of both the male voice’s representation of women and the socially- enforced necessity that women consistently look pretty to find a husband—is supported by her compositional strategies. Maroie’s choices in this song represent deliberate play. The text itself would have drawn members of the audience into the game by giving them the opportunity to decipher her meaning, and it gave her the chance to put her compositional skill to use. The melody’s construction and her use of poetic meter emphasize her textual points. The melody has no definitive temperament, as it is in constant motion, never ceasing to jump from one strategy to another, just as there is no definitive textual meaning, since there are so many levels to the text. Applying these analytical procedures to Mout m’abelist reveals interesting characteristics about her song, but what else can we learn? Considering another chanson d’amour—one that is intimately connected to Maroie and Mout m’abelist—brings forth the possibility that her song was part of a network of communication across chansons. Replying to Maroie Andrieu de Contredit’s chanson d’amour Bonne, belle, et avenant is clearly connected to Maroie herself, but it also textually mirrors Mout m’abelist in key locations and addresses topics from her song. This interplay would create an indirect dialogue in a public, pleasurable, musical 57 game34 and can potentially be seen as a call and a response. Almost nothing is known about Andrieu except that he was from Arras.35 We know that he met and interacted with Maroie from the envoy written at the conclusion of Bonne, belle, et avenant that lists Maroie as the recipient of the song.36 Envoys, which have not received much scholarly attention, are the standard conclusion for a song in this genre, and at first look, this envoy is not out of the ordinary.37 It is four lines long, much shorter than the song’s other stanzas, which is normal.38 There are two “characters” mentioned, the song itself and Maroie. Andrieu addresses the song, speaking to it directly, “Song, go without delay to Dergnau” (see Figure 2.13).39 He sends the addressee, the song, on an urgent mission to give the message to Maroie, who is therefore considered the song’s recipient. 34 See Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 43 for an explanation of the game-like nature of courtly love. 35 Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 5. 36 Marote is a pet name for Maroie, and although the spelling is different, Dergan is Dergnau. 37 Samuel Rosenberg discusses the envoy in “The ‘Envoi’ in Trouvère Lyric,” 51-67. 38 Ibid., 51. 39 Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 113-115. 58 Figure 2.13: Bonne, belle, et avenant (RS 262) lyrics Bonne, belle et avenant A good, beautiful and charming lady m’a proié de chançon faire asked me to make a song. Cler vis a, doulz iex rians; She has a bright face and soft laughing eyes; et sage est, de bon afaire. she is wise and of good character. Si grant amour voeil retraire. I want to tell about a very great love. C’est du mont la miex Vaillant She is the most noble lady in the world qu’onques nuls veïst a nul temps; that anyone ever saw; mon cuer justice et maire. she dominates and controls my heart. Hé, Diex! Comme est… O, God, how…… Courtoisse et debonnaire! courteous and noble she is! Et comme elle est tres plaissans! And how pleasing she is! … tour le mont doit plaire. … she must please everyone. Quant regart son bel viaire, When I look at her beautiful face, son chief blond et son… blanc, her blond hair and her white…, bien taillie et acesmans, her well-formed and adorned [body], de ma mort voi l’essemplaire. of my death, I see the cause. Mes cuers est loiaus et frans; My heart is loyal and sincere; d’illoc ne me puis retraire I cannot renounce all that se je sui ses vrais amans, if I am her true lover, il ne li doit pas desplaire. that should not displease her. Je l’aing; droit est qu’il me paire I love her; it is just that I be her equal que pour lui soie joians. in order that I be joyful because of her. Mes trop sui outrecuidans, But I am too presumptuous, qu’en si haut lieu ossia retraire. for I dared to tell about such a high place. Tant est riche[s] et puissant[s]; She is rich and powerful; sa biauté[s] ici esclaire her beauty illuminates here com li soulaus ou bel tans. like the sun in fine weather. Nus nel saroit contrefaire No one could imitate sa belle couleur pourtraire. or represent her beautiful coloring. Belle est plus resplandissant The beautiful lady is more splendid que la rose el pré naissant than a rose blooming in the meadow en mai quant esté repaire. in May, when summer is returning. Pour lui sui esbaudissans, Because of her, I am bold et si l’aing bien sans meffaire and if I love her without deception, je n’en serai esmaians. I will never be troubled. Je n’ai doleur ne contraire I have neither sorrow nor annoyance puis que j’ai si bel repaire, since I have such a beautiful abode ou mes fins cuers est manans. where my pure heart dwells. 59 Figure 2.13 cont’d Je sui plus riches cent tans I am a hundred times richer que ne fu Julius Cesaire. than was Julius Cesar. Chançon, va t’en sans retraire Song, go without delay vers Dergan, soiez errans. toward Diergnau, set out immediately. Di Marote la vaillans Tell the valliant Marote qu’elle peut de joie faire. that she can rejoice. Throughout the entire piece, not just the envoy, Bonne, belle, et avenant specifically cites Mout m’abelist and responds to the sentiments about which she sings. Andrieu has taken words directly from Mout m’abelist and scattered them around Bonne, belle, et avenant. Table 2.4 lists the areas of interest in Andrieu’s song and puts them side-by-side with the connected text from Maroie’s piece, translations of both, and line numbers for cross reference. The cauda of Mout m’abelist is met with response in Bonne, belle, et avenant primarily in its envoy, but there are also connections in other parts of the song. Maroie begins the fifth line— a line of importance as the beginning of the cauda—with “Si chanterai,” or “So I will sing,” and the first word of Andrieu’s envoy, “Chançon” (“song”). The final words of the same line in Maroie’s text are, “mieuz valoir,” which can be translated as “more worthy,” while in the opening stanza of Bonne, belle, et avenant Andrieu, sings that she is “la miex vaillant,” or “the most worthy.” Again, in line 43 Andrieu calls her “la vaillans” (“the most valliant”/ “the most worthy”).1 1 Hindley et al., Old French-English Dictionary, 601. 60 Table 2.4: Locations of textual similarities between RS 1451 and RS 262 Line of Concordant Line of Text of Mout m’abelist Translation of Translation of Bonne, text of concordance Mout m’abelist Bonne, belle, et belle, Bonne, in Mout avenant et belle, et m’abelist avenant avenant 1 “Bonne, 1 “Mout m’abelist” “I make myself “Pretty, belle, et more beautiful” beautiful, avenant” (T1) becoming” 6 “La miex 5 “mieuz valoir” “more worthy” / “The most vaillant” “more valuable” / worthy” / “The “more noble” most noble” 11-12 “comme 1 “Mout m’abelist” “I please myself “how she is so elle est tres greatly” (T3) pleasing! // plaissans! // …everyone …tout le must be mont doit pleased” plaire” 22 “que pour 7 “Ne mi fait pas ma “Will not let my “in order that I lui soie grant joie faillir” great joy falter” be joyful joians” because of her” 32 “en mai 3 “car en toz tans” “for in every “in May, when quant esté season” summer is repaire” returning” 38 “mes fins 6 “mes fins cuers” “my pure heart” “my pure heart” cuer” 41 “Chançon” 5 “Si chanterai” “I will sing” “Song” 43 “la 5 “por mieuz valoir” “to increase my “the worthy” vaillans” worth” 44 “qu’elle 7 “Ne mi fait pas ma “Will not let my “that she can peut de joie grant joie faillir” great joy falter” rejoice” faire” The responsive nature of Andrieu’s piece can also be seen in his very specific word choice. In line 38 of Bonne, belle, et avenant, Andrieu sings, “mes fins cuers” (“my true heart”),2 mirroring Maroie’s use of the same phrase. Although the word “cuer” occurs 54 times in his entire compositional output, he uses the two-word phrase “fins cuers” in only three instances: 2 Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 113-115. 61 once in Bonne, belle, et avenant, once in Tres haute amors me semont ke je chant (RS 307), and once in J’ai bone amor mout loiaument servie (RS 1214).3 In the two other songs, the usage is slightly different. One is “sim mon fin cuer” (this also means “my true heart”) and the other is “de fin cuer loiaument” (“of true, loyal heart”). Only in Bonne, belle, et avenant is his specific phrasing the same as Maroie’s, which is significant in light of the other similarities. Maroie’s final line, “Ne mi fait pas ma grant joie faillir” (“will not let my great joy falter”), is seemingly very important to Andrieu, since he connects with it in multiple places. Not only does his own text end “joie faire,” which sounds nearly the same as Maroie’s “joie faillir,” but he tells his song to go encourage Maroie to do the very thing she is hoping to do—be joyful. He himself writes in line 22 about being joyful because of her.It is significant that Andrieu responds to both of the meanings of the words “mout m’abelist” because it shows the different ways in which he communicated with Maroie’s song while also acknowledging the visibility of her double meanings. Andrieu references T1 of Maroie’s piece (“I make myself more beautiful”) in his own opening words, “bonne, belle, et avenant” (“pretty, beautiful, and becoming”). The three words are a host of synonyms for “beautiful,” and their parallel location brings out their similarities. His response to T3 (“I please myself greatly”) can be found in the middle of Andrieu’s second stanza, “elle et tres plaissans! …tout le mont doit plaire,” or, “she is so pleasing! … everyone must be pleased [by her].” And, in his envoy, instead of using her proper name, he uses the diminutive, “Marote,” matching her own use of the diminutive “bele pucele.” While it is true that these several quotations do not directly appropriate Maroie’s words, they are semantically related and share a sarcastic, humorous tone. 3 Ibid., 74 and 125. 62 Andrieu’s use of specific words and phrases shows that he wants the listener to know that this is not only a song dedicated to Maroie, but a song in conversation with her. Andrieu’s repetition of the word “retraire” four times in Bonne, belle, et avenant is extraordinarily unusual in his work. In all of his songs, he uses the “-aire” rhyme in just two: Bonne, belle, et avenant, and De belle Yzabel Ferai (RS 81), his only other song to address a named woman. 4 “Retraire” has many possible meanings and can be used in many ways, which enabled Andrieu to include it as frequently as he does in the song. Some possible meanings of the word include “to reply,” “to counterattack,” “to come back,” “to return,” “to ebb,” “to resemble,” “to relate to,” “to connect with,” “to refer to,” and “to recognize.” 5 His repetition of this one word makes it difficult to ignore his song as a response to Maroie, but it also seems to emphasize the changeability of meaning that occurs in both works. If any doubt remains, the first two sentences of Andrieu’s song make it clear that it is a direct response to Mout m’abelist. He writes, “A good, beautiful, and charming lady asked me to make a song.”6 With so many similarities between these two texts, it is hard to imagine that Andrieu was not responding to Maroie. Conclusion Mout m’abelist and Bonne, belle, et avenant could be part of a larger tradition of call and response within the chanson d’amour, but more research on the genre is needed to expand on this possibility. While it is known that envoys in the jeu-parti address judges who would probably sing a response or verdict, 7 there has not been any conclusion of this sort for envoys outside of the debate genre. Could it be that, if we had a full transcription of the text of Mout m’abelist, the 4 See the edition in Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 53-58. 5 See Hindley et al., Old French-English Dictionary, 532. 6 Nelson and van der Werf, The Songs Attributed, 113-115. 7 Mason, “Structure and Process,” 49 and 72. 63 envoy at its end would list Andrieu as addressee or recipient? Could it be that the envoy of her chanson d’amour was a challenge, and that is why Andrieu sings that she “asked [him] to make a song”? More research is required, and since we do not have the envoy for Mout m’abelist, answering these questions for Maroie’s song would be challenging. The music and text of Mout m’abelist shows that Maroie was a skilled writer, coding multiple meanings into her work using both textual and musical techniques. She used complex words and phrases to communicate exactly what she meant, and her music is a reinforcement of her message. Using a turning, swelling melody, she strategically placed expansions of the ambitus, modal changes, metrical play, and leaps to encourage dynamic readings. Andrieu de Contredit heard her song and responded to it. His response used similar words in similar places and met each level of meaning: surface-level and two subversive messages included. These compositional elements are traces of a dialogue between the songs, making it clear that Mout m’abelist was a widely known piece by someone deeply involved in the community network. 64 CHAPTER THREE: Affording Agency: Music and Discourse in Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) Introduction When describing the jeu-parti, Daniel O’Sullivan likens it to the modern-day social media game “Words with Friends.”1 In this popular game, two friends, acquaintances— strangers, even—match up on their game-equipped devices to go head to head in what is essentially a game of wits. Each person battles to make the longest, highest-scoring words using only a random assortment of letters placed on their screen by the computer. At the end, the player who wins is the one with the highest score. It is easy to see the similarities O’Sullivan points out between this familiar, modern game and trouvères’ jeux-partis. In each debate, the challenger sets up a scenario and asks their partner to pick a side. After the partner chooses a side and explains their position, the challenger argues the opposite, and they go back and forth for several stanzas. At the end, each interlocutor designates someone from the audience as a judge. The purpose of this chapter is to dive more deeply into one of these debates, Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744), between Dame Maroie and Dame Margot, exploring how they both relate to courtly love and connect fin amour to other social topics—especially the idea of agency. Maroie and Margot were part of a group of women musicians who used this game to stage serious conversations about social rules, proving themselves to be knowledgeable members of their communities. Je vous pri has two distinct melodies, one in each manuscript. Each melody gives certain affordances to the text that show careful planning, offering flexibility to the singers 1 Daniel O’Sullivan, “Words With Friends, Courtly Edition: The Jeux-Partis of Thibaut de Champagne,” in Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature, ed. Serina Patterson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 61-62. 65 as they progressed through each stanza, and one of the melodies is segmented to illustrate the process of debate. The Social Role of the Jeu-Parti There is evidence that women were welcomed participants in the jeu-parti, and this evidence includes the survival of 13 debate songs that feature at least one feminine-voiced interlocutor.2 In the manuscripts where these songs are transcribed, nine rubrics record “Dame,” and four record named women, although some of the names—like Dame de Gosnai or Demisele Oede—are not particularly specific.3 Sometimes the women debate each other, but other times they debate with men, and, in addition to the women who are named as participators in the main debate, there are also eight women listed as judges of the game.4 These two facets of contribution to the creation of debate songs indicate that women’s opinions and decisions were seen as valid. There is other evidence that women were welcomed in this activity in different geographical areas. One example from the south of France is a handbook that aimed to instruct Catalan girls in appropriate behavior, which encourages the use of debate songs as entertainment for young women.5 Additionally, Eglal Doss-Quinby has suggested that certain areas of the north were more open to women’s debate songs than others, writing that Picard and Lorraine sources “preserve most of the jeux-partis with a feminine voice,” indicating “a regional predilection for poetry authored by women.”6 2 Eglal Doss-Quinby, “’Rolan, de ceu ke m’avez/parti dirai mon samblant’: The Feminine Voice in the Old French jeu-parti.” Neophilologus 84, no. 4 (1999), 499. 3 Ibid., 500. Other names range from “Suer” to “Dame Maroie,” giving varying degrees of identifiability. 4 Ibid., 500. 5 William D. Paden, “Introduction,” in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 18. 6 Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 501. 66 These women were contributors to a genre that was not only light-hearted entertainment, but also allowed musicians and audiences to digest and communally reflect on popular points of interest. The subjects addressed in the jeu-parti are almost always related to courtly love.7 Those who participated discussed relationships between men and women within this context, interpreting the social guidelines of fin amour and attempting to persuade listeners to agree with their position in the debate, which may or may not have been sincere. As Doss-Quinby writes, “The purpose of the debate is not to display genuine convictions, or to settle an authentic controversy, but to confront ideas and poetic personas.”8 Regardless of the subject, at the conclusion of the song, each participant’s analysis of social values would be assessed by the judges. Although no judgements were recorded for any extant jeu-parti, commentary shows that each judge gave their verdict in rhyming couplets.9 The audience would also have taken something from the interaction, and in this way the subjects addressed in each debate contributed to a broader social discourse. Because the subject of the jeu-parti is relationship conduct, the genre is deeply tied to contemporary gender roles. These women, writing jeux-parties and debating courtly conduct, were actively contributing to the dissemination of ideas regarding their actions. Compositional Elements The jeu-parti is thought to have originated in the city of Arras, and the alignment of the local puy with the city’s confraternity—and women’s membership in that same confraternity— may explain the dominance of jeux-partis in women’s compositional output when compared to 7 O’Sullivan, “Words with Friends,” 63-64. 8 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 74. The same quote appears in Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 501. 9 Jenna Phillips translates and quotes Molinier on this matter, see Phillips, “Singers without Borders: A Performer’s Rotulus and the Transmission of Jeux-Partis,” Journal of Medieval History 45, no. 1 (2019): 75. 67 other genres of song.10 The jeu-parti probably originated in the Puy d’Arras, which was a social, urban lyric contest where individuals from various backgrounds would compete.11 The genre was, as Yolanda Plumley puts it, a “particular specialism” of the city of Arras, allowing its members to interact, collaborate, and have fun.12 Some jeux-partis rubrics even indicate that they won the “crown” of the puy, proving the genre’s importance at the event.13 The puy had intimate connections with the Carité de Notre Dame des Ardents,14 which is especially significant when considering women’s involvement. Because nearly half the members of this confraternity were women,15 it stands to reason that the women involved in the confraternity would also be involved in the creation of one of its most popular games at the puy. All signs imply that Je vous pri’s authors were regular participants in the jeu-parti practice. Firstly, the scribes leave no special extra-musical symbols or writing to indicate that they saw the inclusion of music by women as unusual. They also center the song in a group of debates credited to men, so its placement is standard. Additionally, we have seen that Maroie de Dergnau was a well-known musician, and although Dame Margot has not yet been identified beyond her name (and while she is not yet credited as the author of any chansons), she probably did participate in the creation of other music. Several scholars have suggested that she was one 10 While there are plenty of anonymous songs authored by women, there are more jeux-partis rubrics that verbalize their feminine authorship (to a specific woman or a “dame”) than any other genre of song. See Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 514; and Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères. 11 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 73. See also Yolanda Plumley, The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 153-156 for a detailed discussion of the puy. Joan Tasker Grimbert has argued that the genre’s origins were actually in Champagne, see “Chrétien the Trouvère: Elements of Jeux-Partis in Cligés,” Faux Titre 361 (2010): 110-111. 12 Plumley, The Art of Grafted Song, 156. 13 Ardis Butterfield, Music and Poetry in Medieval France: From Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 137. 14 Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater & Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007) 216-218. 15 Brianne Dolce, “’Soit hom u fem’: New Evidence for Women Musicians and the Search for the ‘Women Trouvères,’” Revue de Musicologie 106, no. 2 (2020): 309-310. 68 of the judges of Cuvelier, or I parra (RS 8) between Cuvelier and Jehan Bretel.16 The other judge of the debate is Demisele Oede, who is called to judge in four other jeux-partis.17 The fact that Dame Margot and Demisele Oede judged the debate together might signal the importance of women’s opinions to particular individuals or in particular debates. While the authors themselves seem to have been accepted by their peers as regular participants, Je vous pri’s rarity and exceptionality as a non-anonymous women’s song is undeniable, and its importance is also signaled by its association with not only two manuscripts but two distinct melodies, one in each source. This phenomenon—the transcription of two or more melodies for one set of lyrics—is not uncommon.18 Scholars have debated the reasons why one set of lyrics survived with multiple melodies. Biancamaria Brumana Pascale postulated that each melody corresponded to one of the opponents at the time of the debate.19 Rather than believing that the challenger created a musical and metrical guide that the defender would have to follow (the common scholarly understanding), she argued that each musician created their own melody.20 However, if this were the case, the phenomenon would probably occur even more frequently, and, if the defender were able to write their own melody, what would be the point of following the rhyme scheme and metrics set up by the first singer? Je vous pri’s two melodies may suggest repeated performances of the song leading to widespread dissemination of its content. It is possible that the transcription of Je vous pri with two melodies indicates the circulation of its words but not its first melody. Jenna Philips makes a convincing argument for this idea in her article about a rotulus recently rediscovered in 16 Arthur Langfors, Recueil Général des Jeux-Partis Français (Paris: Édouard Champion, 1926), lii; Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 500; and Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 27. 17 Doss-Quinby, 500. 18 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 73. 19 Biancamaria Brumana Pascale, “Le musiche nei jeux-partis francesi,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Perugia 13 (1975–76): 509–572, cited in Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 501. 20 Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 501. 69 England.21 The roll of parchment attached to a cord was designed for easy portability, made for someone who wanted to read the text on the go.22 It holds the lyrics of five jeux-partis (out of seven Old French songs total), but none of their melodies are transcribed.23 Philips points out that an easily portable trouvère text is evidence of repeat performances and that singers may not have always remembered the tune.24 The topics addressed by Maroie and Margot, their reasoning, and their opinions would have been socially visible wherever the song travelled. Each trouvère approached common subjects in very different ways, exemplifying how each interlocutor’s individuality affected their argumentative perspective, whether or not—as Doss-Quinby pointed out—they were portraying their true opinion. The debates are about courtly love and its associated conduct, but the language used in this genre is more to-the-point and more humorous than that of genres such as chansons d’amours.25 Some lack explicitly sexual language but imply sexual activity in the situation at hand, such as the debate between Thibaut de Champange and a certain Gui, Cuens, je vous part un gieu par aatie (RS 1097), in which the men debate whether a faithful or deceitful knight is a better behaving lover.26 Others are a great deal raunchier, like Amis, ki est li muelz Vaillant (RS 365), where an anonymous woman and man debate who would be a better lover, a man who cannot perform sexual acts but spends a lot of time with his beloved or a man who completes the act quickly and immediately leaves.27 Both of these jeux-partis question what makes one lover superior to another, but they approach the 21 Phillips, Singers without Borders, 55-79. 22 Ibid., 62. 23 Ibid., 60. 24 Ibid., 58 and 72 in particular. This could also be one reason that no judgements were recorded: the judges and their decisions would be different each time a piece was performed, see 74-75. 25 This is emphasized by the game-like structure; this is discussed throughout O’Sullivan, “Words with Friends.” 26 Ibid,. 65. I would note that even these songs can have underlying sexual messages, functioning like the chanson from Chapter Two. 27 Doss Quinby, “Rolan,” 510. 70 issue in slightly different ways. The specific flow of each argument shows the importance of individuality in its construction, whether or not the person was displaying genuine convictions. Extant jeux-partis by women record carefully curated arguments that focus on practical and theoretical details more than the bawdy rigamarole of the game that is common in masculine-voiced debates.28 Men in jeux-partis treat topics personally rather than in an abstract form, relating their arguments to their own lives.29 Their messages are very satirical and detail their own suffering or insult their opponent in humorous phrases. Women interlocutors were very concerned with honor and refrained from excessive insults, speaking about each topic with far less humorous language than men.30 They steer away from personal details towards more general, hypothetical discussion,31 which suggests that women saw the discourse in each debate as an opportunity to examine social rules and standards as a whole. Contemplating Agency The notions of individuality and what might be compared to “playing the devil’s advocate” within debates are complicated by the fact that no participant in the debate had total agency. The first interlocutor was able to choose the general subject of the song, but their position was largely decided by the other participant, who had no control over the general topic but full control over their position. Because that second participant chose whatever side of the argument they wanted, the first interlocutor’s ability to choose was significantly limited. For Dame Maroie and Dame Margot, the issue of agency extended beyond each interlocutor’s position in the argument and into the subject of the debate. 28 Ibid., 506, 513. 29 Ibid., 506, 513. 30 Ibid., 512. 31 Ibid., 513. 71 Je vous pri addresses women’s agency to instigate a romantic relationship, and it isn’t the only song by women to do so. Dame Margot sets up a hypothetical situation where two people, a man and a woman, knowingly love each other but the man is too cowardly to confess his adoration (See Figure 3.1). She asks Maroie if the woman should confess her own love to him or if she should stay silent and suffer. Maroie argues that the woman should speak, and Margot is left to argue that the woman should be silent, abiding by the principles of courtly love. Lorete, suer, par amor (RS 1962) and several Occitan cansos also debate the freedom of women to voice their feelings.32 In each song, one woman argues for silence, the other for the direct admission of their love. While Margot’s argument in favor of abiding by courtly code initially reads as discouraging of women’s agency in general, she builds choice, power, and action into the silence for which she advocates. Her argument is in harmony with courtly codes, but her lover is not fully powerless in the face of love, how masculine voices usually depict their characters in chansons d’amours.33 Margot argues that a woman who courts her beloved before he confesses his love diminishes her own value. The woman, staying silent to preserve her honor, should rather endeavor to convince the man to speak through her “knowledge” (see Figure 3.1).34 She can sit near him, spend time with him, and assure him of her love indirectly. Margot invents ways to creatively retain a woman’s power even while she abides by social rule. She finds a way for women to manipulate a situation even as they avoid rocking the boat.35 Her ingenuity adds an option to the picture of the debate; her woman is a silent agent. 32 See Kathryn Gravdal, “Mimicry, Metonymy, and ‘Women’s Song’: the Medieval Woman Trobairitz,” Romantic Review 83, no. 4 (1992): 412-426; and Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 506. 33 Gravdal, “Mimicry, Metonymy,” 412. 34 Figure 3.1 is the translation from Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 74-77. 35 Doss-Quinby, “Rolan,” 506 mentions women musicians’ ability to manipulate situations. 72 Figure 3.1: Lyrics and translation of Je vous Pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) (1) Je vous pri, dame Maroie, I entreat you, Lady Maroie, Ke respondés contre moi. To debate against me. Une dame simple et choie A woman, innocent and tranquil, Est bien amee de foi, Is loved dearly and faithfully, Et ele aime bien ausi, And loves dearly in return, Ce saciés vous tout de fi; This you should know with certainty; Mais ci lest de tel manière But the one who loves her is such Ki l’aime ke sa proiiere That his desire N’ose pas gehir, He dares not avow, Et si ne puet avenir Thus it can never come to pass Ke ja li faice savoir. That he will ever admit it to her. S’or me voliés dire voir, Now, please answer me truthfully, S’en doit ele deschovrir, Should she reveal her feelings U ele s’en doit tasir? Or should she remain silent? (2) Dame Margot, bien vauroie Lady Margot, it is well worth Droit gugier sans estreloi. Judging the truth fairly. Puis k’Amours si les maistroie Since Love governs them to such an extent K’il aiment bien ambedoi That they dearly love each other, De chuer loiaument, je di: Each with a loyal heart, I say Se vil n’a le cuer hardi That if he does not have the courage De dire ke il l’air ciere, To tell her he holds her dear, Pas ne doit cele ester fiere, She should not be proud, Ains doit obeïr Rather, she should obey Son cuer et sa bouce ouvrir Her heart and speak Pour l’amour faire aparoir. To let love appear. Puis ke cil n’en a pooir, Since he is incapable of it, Ele le doit parfurnit, She should accomplish it, Se de l’amor vuet joïr. If she wants love’s joys. (3) Vous n’alés pas droite voie, You are going astray, Dame Marote, je croi. Lady Marote, I believe. Trop mesprent dame ki proie A grave mistake a lady makes who courts Son ami avant. Pour koi Her beloved first. Why S’aveilleroit elle si? Should she demean herself thus? Se cil a le cuer falli, If he lacks courage, Ne di jou pas k’il afiere I do not think it proper Por ce k’ele le reqiere, That she should then solicit his love 73 Figure 3.1 cont’d Ains s’en doit chovrir Rather she should conceal her feelings Et les fais d’Amours soufrir And suffer Love’s pains Sans ja faire percevoir; Without ever disclosing them; Kar feme doit tant valoir For a woman should have such high merit Que n’en doit parole issir That no word should come from her Ki son pris puist amenrir. That could diminish her worth. (4) Dame Margot, bien quidoie Lady Margot, I really thought Miex entendisiés .i. poi You understood something En amours; je vous avoie Of love; I had Le droit jugé, mais bien voi Rendered a judgment to you, but I see clearly Ke vous estes contre mi That you argue against me A vo tort. Je vous afi: Wrongly. I promise you this: Boine amour n’ert ja entiere True love will never be perfect Q’aucune folours n’i fiere. Unless struck by a little madness. Nus n’en puet partir No one can partake of it Sans folour, don’t face oïr Without madness, so she should make known Cele a celui son voloir. Her desire to him. Folie convient avoir Madness is necessary A boine amour maintenir To preserve good love Ki en veut les biens sentir. If one wants to enjoy its pleasures. (5) Dame Marote, i foloie Lady Marote, one is free Ki veut; mais mie n’otroi To act the fool; but I cannot concede Ke d’amours puist avoir joie That any lunatic, man or woman, Fol ne fole, ki n’ont loi. Devoid of reason, can possess Love’s joy. Ne soustenés mais ensi Uphold no longer, as you have, Ke dame prit son ami; That a lady should entreat her beloved; Ke s’ele e nest coustumiere, Because, if that is her habit, Ele se met tant ariere She does herself such a disservice C’on l’en doit hair. That one must hate her because of it. Autrement s’en doit couvrir: She should find other means to her end: Kere doit par son savoir She should endeavor through her knowledge Ke le puist souvent veoir, To be able frequently to see him, Parles et les lui seïr; Speak to him, and sit by him; Bien s’en doit a tant tenir. Better that she limit herself to that. (6) D’amours ne saves .i. troie, You know little about love, Dame Margot, tres bien voie. Lady Margot, from what I see. Cele est fole ki monoie A woman is mad who grants her favors 74 Figure 3.1 cont’d Prent pour faire a li dannoi, In exchange for money, Kar point n’a d’amour en li; Because there is no love in her; Mais qant doi cuer sont saisi But when two hearts are seized D’amours ki n’est losengiere, By a love that is not deceitful ,Bien est cose droituriere It is perfectly right Dire son Plaisir To express one’s desire A son ami par desir, To one’s beloved out of longing, Ains c’on kiece en desespoir. Lest one fall into despair. Miex vient en joie manoir Better it is to live in joy Par proier q’adés langir For having pleaded than to languish now Par trop taire et puis morir. For having been silent and then die. Margot brings up an interesting point, saying that it is more “proper” for the woman to “suffer Love’s pains” than to demean herself by speaking up. In her argument, the woman must consent to this experience of pain if her honor is to be maintained. This seems to be where choice stops in Margot’s argument, since she sees this pain as unavoidable if the woman wants to maintain her social standing. Dame Maroie, on the other hand, argues that resigning to pain is pointless when a lover could speak up. The women have different stances on the necessity of pain, but both accept “Love’s pains” as extant without saying what they are or how they happen. Due to this common understanding on the part of the two authors, there is no debate about whether or not pain is a common outcome of love. Considering how pain plays a role in each interlocutor’s argument requires some attempt to diagnose “Love’s pains” and understand where they come from; revisiting and complicating the notion of courtly love can help in doing so. As discussed in the introduction, courtly love centers a masculine perspective. La Dame is the cold, unspeaking, and unfeeling object of desire, 75 and her denial of the lover is the standard outcome of each song.1 Many masculine subjects do not take action to woo their desired partner, conceiving of power as something out of their hands and seeing silence as the most respectful and noble conduct.2 The masculine-voice’s quiet acceptance of la Dame’s rejection signifies his noble qualities and competence in courtly love, but it is also very frequently connected to the experience of suffering. To quote Katherine Gravdal, troubadours and trouvères sang about “voluntary suffering in the face of rejection, abject submission to the heartless domination of unrequited love, and the resigned acceptance of emotional victimization.”3 Self-harm and death metaphor are tropes within the genre.4 Where self-harm is not referenced in trouvère lyrics, excruciating, debilitating sadness replaces it as the product of love. This secular concept of pain has a parallel in contemporary religious practices and writings. The acceptance of suffering as a natural and noble part of love mimics the self- mutilation of Christian mystics, who experienced pain as a purifying ritual.5 Acts of self-harm were committed in an effort to imitate Christ’s suffering on the cross, by which a person could become closer to God.6 Several women mystics wrote poetry that alludes to blood, death, illness, and severe pain as vehicles to redemption.7 Hadewijch, a mystic who wrote poetry in the Low 1 Helen Dell, Desire by Gender and Genre (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 12-15, 53-60. 2 Gravdal, “Metaphor, Metonymy,” 411. 3 Gravdal, “Metaphor, Metonymy,” 415. 4 For one example, see Simon Gaunt, “Discourse Desired: Desire, Subjectivity, and Mouvance in Can vei la lauzeta mover,” in Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, ed. James J. Paxon and Cynthia A. Gravlee (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1998), 89-94. 5 Sharmain van Blommestein, “Medieval Redemptive Suffering: Female Mystical Expressions of Pain and Pleasure and Medieval Society’s Influence on Mystical Spirituality,” The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society 4 (2014): 40. 6 Van Blommestein, “Female Redemptive Suffering,” 39; the musicality related to this practice is discussed in Jody Enders, “The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain,” Fifteenth Century Studies 27 (2002): 93-112. 7 Van Blommestein, “Female Redemptive Suffering,” 39-53. 76 Countries during the thirteenth century, understood the experience of pain as endemic and necessary to love. Hadewijch writes, “… if you wish to turn with me to Love, See in what suffering I have borne What you were unready to suffer. Come, desire to suffer in order to ascent.”8 Margot and Maroie’s inclusion of pain in their debate is an important reference to the valorization of misery and its ability to make courtly singers appear more noble or pure. For mystics, suffering was an honorable experience, and this is not far from Margot’s depiction of it in Je vous pri. Margot does not directly argue that the woman in her song should physically harm herself to be more worthy, but she portrays the experience of “Love’s pains” as a natural and necessary part of love. Silence is painful but it ultimately maintains her worth, so, indirectly at least, Margot does connect pain to value and valorizes that pain. Sharmain van Blommestein writes that the experience of pain was an element of romantic union for women mystics: “not only is God’s love in spiritual marriage implemented as a condition to the acceptance of pain, but that love is achieved through self-sacrifice.”9 Jody Enders has shown how pain is depicted as pleasurable in medieval theatre, discussing scenes where music is played on the organs of open bodies.10 In these ways, sacred themes intersect with secular knowledge. 8 Ibid., 49. 9 Ibid., 44. 10 Enders, “Body in Pain,” 93. 77 Maroie’s argument places high importance on the lovers’ wellbeing, especially that of the woman. She believes that “it is perfectly right to express one’s desire to one’s beloved out of longing,” calling a lover who is not honest about their feelings “proud.” Her argument runs against the grain of courtly code, suggesting that love is an act that humans are responsible for creating, placing power in the woman’s hands. She sings that if the man is “incapable of it, [the woman] should accomplish it, if she wants Love’s joys.” The last words of the song come from Maroie, who says that “it is better to live in joy for having pleaded than to languish now for having been silent and then die.” She voices her opposition to silence and pain, noting how one can avoid them and feel better. Both women’s arguments locate practicality and idealism in elements of agency. Margot’s argument finds practical agency in active silence and purifying pain, but it is also predicated on the idea that the cowardly masculine lover will eventually notice the woman’s noble qualities and finally admit his love for her. In a way, Margot contradicts herself here, having already said in her opening stanza that the lover will “never” admit his feelings. On the other hand, Maroie sees speaking as the more practical solution, since it will allow the woman— and the lover, for that matter—to avoid misery and regret. Maroie’s argument does not acknowledge the potential for backlash that a woman might experience for transgressing the codes of fin amour. Maroie indirectly approaches the discussion of honor by bringing the concept of madness into the debate, setting up what might be seen as varieties of madness that absolve a woman in love. In contrast to Margot, who is quite concerned with honor, Maroie appears to be nonchalant about the quality. In fact, she never specifically mentions honor, sidestepping in her retort. She responds to Margot’s contention that a woman who speaks first is dishonorable by saying, “True 78 love will never be perfect unless struck by a little madness.” Margot does not seem to understand Maroie’s meaning at first; she counters that no fool could truly love since fools possess no logic. But Maroie quickly moves to differentiate between Margot’s interpretation of madness and what Maroie meant: a woman who confesses her love in spite of the dangers to her honor is not mentally mad, but socially mad. She gives the example of a prostitute to contrast these types of madness, singing, “A woman is mad who grants her favors in exchange for money, because there is no love in her.” The woman is internally, mentally mad, because she does one thing but feels the other. Then, in contrast, Maroie sings, “When two hearts are seized by a love that is not deceitful, it is perfectly right to express one’s desire,” setting true love as a valid reason to break courtly code, even if it is social madness. By situating madness not as a state of mind but rather as a set of social actions, Maroie’s usage of the word allows it to hold meaning as an effectual metonym for the validity of women’s agency. Maroie argues that the recklessness of speaking up is the result of an honest, pure love, setting the action of silence as the product of a lesser emotion. She argues that only true love could make a woman mad enough to confess her love and that only this kind of love is “perfect.” Women who transgress the boundaries that Margot partially crosses—by finding alternate ways to be an agent—should not be seen as less honorable, because they have only transgressed these boundaries to obey their hearts. In opposition to the silence of fin amour, confessing love, while mad, is “necessary”; more specifically, it is necessary for a person to enjoy love. Both women consider agency within culture as a whole, and they do so by setting up a hypothetical context that avoids making the debate exclusively personal. Neither turns the discussion inward, and their words trend away from the humorous. This broad, contextual discussion of agency is a reflection on cultural norms, and neither woman is totally aligned to 79 those norms. Margot considers them and constructs a solution that works to maintain women’s agency while abiding by social rules. Maroie argues that these cultural norms fundamentally misunderstand true love and consign individuals to misery and suffering. Music and Choice In analyzing Je vous pri’s two melodies, it is possible to gain a sense of how these melodic lines were written flexibly to offer choice to their singers. In his examination of jeux- partis, Joseph Mason shows how a strophic melody may be manipulated to enhance the meaning of subsequent stanzas.11 Mason suggests that, rather than considering the first stanza of text as most relevant to its given melody, this first stanza should be understood as one interpretation of several.12 For Je vous pri, both melodies connect to the text in intricate ways, and each stanza of text seems to use different melodic elements to emphasize a point. Mason has shown in other jeux-partis how invention and division played an important role in the construction of melody, and his framework is also helpful in exploring the musical and textual meanings of Je vous pri. Both invention and division were techniques based on rhetorical practices, but, while invention was a constructive act, the concept of division was a deconstructive act.13 Invention was a process in which a singer would search their memory for material, constructing a melody from these smaller chunks.14 Division, on the other hand, involved the use of textual clues to signal segmentation of the text.15 As Mason writes, “There 11 Joseph W. Mason, “Structure and Process in the Old French Jeu-Parti,” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): especially 65-72. 12 Ibid., 65. 13 His discussion of invention begins on 212, and that of division on 227; see Joseph W. Mason, “Trouver et Partir: The Meaning of Structure in the Old French Jeu-Parti,” Early Music History 40 (2022). 14 Ibid., 214-215. 15 Mason demonstrates how certain conjunctions that are commonly used in jeux-partis texts, such as “mais” or “ains,” queued the division of text. See ibid., 229. 80 are also ways in which trouvères would invoke a state of textual dilemma or division that was mirrored by the melody; put another way, both melody and text can be seen to spring from the same cognitive process of division.”16 Mason also demonstrates that the process of division can enhance extra-musical meanings.17 There are several modern editions of Je vous pri’s melodies, each helpful for various reasons. Her edition contains both melodies, aligned vertically and transcribed with the text of the first stanza.18 Hans Tischler’s edition also aligns the melodies vertically, but his version assigns modern rhythms to each melody, attempting to make an easily performable repertoire for modern musicians.19 Additionally, the editors of Songs of the Women Trouvères include a transcription of Je vous pri in the anthology, but it shows only one of the melodies.20 Elizabeth Eva Leach has argued that the methods Tischler uses to assign rhythms privilege “the syllabic organisation of textual versification,” which “can obscure the presence of more purely pitch- based repetition structures or the way a modern performer would sing the pieces.”21 Because of these issues with modern assignment of rhythms, I have chosen not to deal with the Tischler edition. My own editions of each melody (see Figure 3.2 and Figure 3.3) relied upon the manuscripts, the Coldwell edition, and the edition from Songs of the Women Trouvères. 16 Ibid., 229. 17 Ibid., 227. 18 Coldwell, “Jougleresses,” 54. 19 Hans Tischler, Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition (Neuhausen: American Institute of Musicology and Hänssler-Verlag, 1997), 11: no. 1005. 20 Doss-Quinby et al., Songs of the Women Trouvères, 75. 21 Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 8. 81 Figure 3.2: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS A 82 Figure 3.2 cont’d 83 Figure 3.3: Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744) in MS a 84 Figure 3.3 cont’d I will analyze both melodies to gain a sense of how the compositional elements used by Margot and Maroie aid in the delivery of their text. I will again observe some of the methods used by Elizabeth Eva Leach in her analyses of chanson melodies. The concepts of invention and division described by Mason will also play a significant role in my interpretations. Both melodies are in pedes cum cauda form; Phrases 1-4, here abbreviated as P1, P2, P3, etc., are the frons, and the remaining 10 phrases are the cauda.22 I will start with a broad discussion of the 22 I consider a new line to begin where there is punctuation in the text of the manuscript, even if there is no vertical marking to indicate the beginning of a new line. In every case, the manuscripts agree on punctuation. Where one manuscript records punctuation but no vertical scratch, the other manuscript records a vertical scratch, so the sources agree—albeit abstractly—on where new poetic and melodic lines begin. Considering all the phrases, as separated by 85 melody from MS A (hereafter “M1,” see Figure 3.2 and Table 3.1), which establishes two themes in the frons that are developed in the cauda. Moving on, I will discuss M1’s relevance to Je vous pri’s lyrics and examine how the singers use text and music together to make meaning. I will then consider the melody from MS a (hereafter “M2,” see Figure 3.3), following the same procedures that will be used for the analysis of M1. Table 3.1: Abbreviations in musical analysis Abbreviation Stands for… Where in melody? Relevant Figures M1 Whole melody MS A 3.2; 3.4; 3.6 - 3.13 M2 Whole melody MS a 3.3; 3.14 - 3.15 P1, P2, P3, etc. Phrase one, phrase Number corresponds two, phrase three, etc. to poetic line T1 Theme one First eight notes of P1 3.7-3.9 and P3 in M1 T2 Theme two Last six notes of P1 3.7, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, and P3 in M1 3.12 In M1, Margot’s expression and development of thematic material is a clear representation of compositional process, and these melodic themes, just like the text, battle each other. P1 establishes two separate themes that are molded and divided throughout the cauda.23 The first theme (hereafter T1) spans the first six syllables or eight notes of P1 and theme two (hereafter T2) spans four syllables, or seven notes, beginning immediately after T1 and crossing into P2. In Figure 3.4, the themes are color coded and boxed. The notes in orange are part of T1, and the notes in blue are part of T2. textual punctuation, both melodies have fourteen melodic phrases, one for each poetic line. I will refer to both the music and poetry of each phrase in each stanza as “P1,” “P2,” “P3,” etc., where “P” stands for phrase and the number corresponds to the line of the stanza. My numbering starts over for each stanza. 23 These themes are also established by P3 and the first note of P4, since P3 and P4 are a repeat. 86 Figure 3.4: Themes in M1 As a strophic song, the themes and the play on those themes would be increasingly evident in each stanza.24 The themes are not always presented in full, appearing throughout the melody as divided, constituent units of the larger whole. But, since T1 and T2 are repeated in their complete form twice during the frons, they would be identifiable to a listener throughout the cauda. Figure 3.5 shows the locations where each theme is stated in their complete, incomplete, or altered formats, maintaining the colors used in Figure 3.4 (orange for T1, blue for T2, and the purple box is addressed below). 24 Leach, “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?” 10. 87 Figure 3.5: Themes in M1, complete, incomplete, and/or altered 88 In the absence of each whole theme, their segmentations can be located by distinct, characteristic motion. For T1, this is the movement of the line into the highest register of the whole song. Although the high F is not present in the first statements of T1, both times the high F occurs in this melody they are embellishments within the theme. The theme’s opening C-D-E- E motion (boxed in blue and purple) over the first three syllables is also an important element, but this motion is frequently altered or disappears entirely from T1. The single-syllable, distinct C-B-A motion that opens T2 serves as a clear cue that the theme will be either presented in full or in an embellished way. Figure 3.6 and Figure 3.7 break down T1 and T2 into their smaller units that are removed or embellished throughout the song. Similar to Figures 3.4 and 3.5, I have used color coding in Figures 3.6 and 3.7 to designate these units within the individual themes. Figure 3.6: Alteration of T1 theme, aligned by the placement of smaller units 89 Figure 3.7: Alteration of T2 theme, aligned by the placement of smaller units Margot has invented, divided, and rearranged these themes to represent the argumentative nature of the jeu-parti. The treatment of T1 and T2 mimics the process of a debate, in that each theme stands in for one argument. One theme begins by moving upwards from C, and the other begins by moving downwards from C. So, while each theme begins in the same place, each heads in a different direction. The starting point is like the situation at hand—the subject being debated—and the divergence from that point is like the creation of two arguments stemming from the same subject. Even in their difference, there is still a common element. 90 Throughout M1, Margot also separates these “arguments,” using their locations to signify struggle, victory, and defeat. The bulk of T1 is always in the first half of a phrase and the bulk of T2 always in the second half, evident in Figure 3.5. There are several areas where the themes collide, and T2 is particularly adept at crossing into T1’s territory. T2 is divided across the ends of each line from P1-P2, P3-4, P8-P9, and P11-12 (see Figure 3.5). This flow across each line is made possible by the cadential movement of the theme, which has two groups of three notes that flow towards and into the A at the beginning of each following line (Figure 3.8). Margot constructed T2 to withstand the division of poetic lines, signifying that the second theme—or second argument—can easily pass into the space designated for the first theme—or the first argument. Although T1 obscures the beginning of T2 on two occasions (P11 and P13— refer back to Figure 3.5), it never crosses the division of poetic lines themselves. T1 battles to stand on its own, appropriating material from the second theme, but it is always confined to single lines. It is only able to pass into the second theme’s territory by using that theme’s material. If division signifies the debate, and one theme cannot withstand the division created by poetic lines, that same theme—or the argument it represents—cannot withstand the debate. Figure 3.8: T2 flow into note A The disappearance of the beginning of T1 shows that the first theme or argument is unstable. The point of departure for the debate, mentioned above as the direction of departure from pitch C, serves as a common ground for the two themes. The beginning of T1, which in the 91 initial statement was also the beginning of the poetic line, frequently disappears, showing that this theme lacks stability. Its initial notes do not cross onto the end of the previous line, they just go away (refer again to Figure 3.5, Figure 3.6, and Figure 3.7). In effect, T1 is swallowed in the space between the end of one line and the start of the next, and it is often recognizable only by its registration, not by its substance. T2, on the other hand, never fails to present its opening motion, showing its stability and proving that it is able to stick to the point. T2’s triumph shows how the division of a melody can signify victory, and this can also be seen in the change of thematic length and unification of T2 with other material over the course of the song. By unifying T2 with other important compositional elements, Margot indicates that this theme or argument has broad relevance and applicability, just as a winning argument would. In the end, while T1 fails to subsist, T2 prevails, exemplifying victory. In their initial statements, T1 is longer than T2. As the debate goes on, each theme becomes more complex, the way an argument develops over the course of discussion. But, in the end, after the themes battle back and forth to dominate the lines, Margot shortens T1 to a mere three notes, expanding T2 into a controlling position of the final line (refer to Figure 3.5). She also weaves T2 into material from the ends of P2 and P4 (see Figure 3.9 and the purple box in Figure 3.5). These suspension-release elements would be recognizable to a listener as the final melodic content of the frons.25 25 The end of the frons was a recognizable, important moment for listeners, see Mason, “Structure and Process,” 52. 92 Figure 3.9: Unification of T2 with material from end of frons Apart from the themes, M1 is also divided by tonal center and syllabic trading, which, as we will see, allows Margot and Maroie to emphasize and illustrate areas of their argument. Although both the frons and the cauda emphasize note A as their tonal centers, there are areas where the melody strongly centers note C.26 These tonal centers act to group lines and phrases together. Figure 3.10 shows the areas where these divisions occur, coding tonal center A in green and tonal center C in yellow. The frons is in tonal center A, but P5 and P6 move away from A 26 According to Mason in ibid., 62, the final note of the frons is almost always the tonal center of at least that section, even if it changes during the cauda. In Je vous pri, both the frons and the cauda conclude with tonal center A. 93 and towards the tonal center of C through an alteration of the theme. It resolves to A within the line rather than at the beginning of the next, but instead of landing there and concluding in that tonal center, the syllable gets a second note, moving back up to B. The theme is used in this way to destabilize tonal center A, leaving the line unstable. P6 starts on D and concludes on C, so the B at the end of P5 and the D at the beginning of P6 frame the new tonal center, C. The next three lines work back towards A, dividing themselves into another section not only through their shift to A but also through the trading of syllables. In this section of the cauda, P9 gives one syllable each to P7 and P8. Instead of each line having seven syllables, they are grouped together through the exchange of this resource. P9 has only five syllables; it is the only line of text in the whole stanza that does not have seven or eight syllables. P10, P11, and P12 form a fourth section of the cauda, and the final lines, P13 and P14, are fifth section, grouped out in similar ways to the others. When considering the text, particularly as full sentences, Margot and Maroie use this sectioning by tonal center to stress important moments in their text. In most places, the singers complete their sentences where each tonal center ends, and important assertions happen at the beginning of a new one. For example, the word “et” is a textual cue that a new idea is coming into the argument, and each time the women use this word at the beginning of a line, they have placed it where the melody starts with the new tonal center. Additionally, in Margot’s second stanza, each new melodic section begins with an important question or assertion: “Should she demean herself thus?” “I do not think it proper,” “And suffer Love’s pains,” and “That no word should come from her.” 94 Figure 3.10: Tonal centers in M1 95 Maroie utilizes these divisions in the opposite way, illustrating her conception of madness by positioning her sentences across these sections. Rather than clarifying each point by placing it at the beginning of a tonal center, in the stanza where she brings up madness, there is a lack of clarity, since most of the new melodic sections begin in the middle of a sentence: “that you argue against me,” “without madness,” and “to preserve good love.” The only section that starts with an assertive sentence (apart from the opening of the stanza and melody) is the third one, saying, “True love will never be perfect/ unless struck by a little madness.” In her use of the division of tonal centers, she confuses the listener by dividing her words in unusual ways, musically and textually representing madness. Maroie utilizes the shifting tonal centers to emphasize her point when she brings up the stanza’s central idea of madness; the rest of the stanza is divided in unusual ways. Of the whole debate, this stanza also has the most sentences split across poetic lines, such as “You understood something” (break) “of love; I had” (break) “rendered a judgement to you,” etc. Overall, Margot and Maroie use the division of themes and sectioning via tonal center together with smaller melodic elements to emphasize textual meaning. For example, the four- note scalar flourish in P11 is the largest melisma in the entire melody. In each stanza, the women place definitive words on the melisma. In two of her three stanzas, Margot places “savoir” (“to know”/ “knowledge”) on the scale, making the word stand out (refer back to Figure 3.3). Given that her argument is that the woman should use her knowledge to entice the uncourageous suitor, it is meaningful that she puts “savoir” on this scale two out of the three times she sings it, in her first and her final stanzas. In her central stanza (stanza three; refer back to Figure 3.3), Margot places “percevoir” (“perceive”) in this location, a word that describes her broader message as well: that the woman should not disclose her love but allow the man to notice it. Maroie uses this 96 melisma to her advantage as well, emphasizing the words “aparoir” (“appear”), “desespoir” (“despair”), and “voloir” (“desire”; refer back to Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.3) on the four-note scale. These words tie into her broad meaning as well: she wants the woman’s love to manifest, not to be smothered; she uses longing and want as reasons to act; and she rejects the idea that misery is noble. In all six stanzas, this four-note scale is used to clarify and underscore the women’s arguments. The affordances for emphasis that the melody gives to the text and the way the women use this melody to their argumentative advantages is also evident in M2, the second melody in Coldwell’s transcription.27 For example, in the frons of M2, we will see that a small change between P1 and P3 becomes significant when considering the text. P1’s “pri dame Ma-” and P3’s “dame simple_et” occur in the same area of each line. In P1, “pri dame” sounds B-C-D-C, and “Ma-” sounds C-B-A-G, repeating the C at the beginning of the motion (see Figure 3.11). In P2, “dame sim-” is the same as P1’s “pri dame”, but “-ple_et” sounds B-A-G, not repeating the C and shortening the syllable to a plainer three-note scale. This shortening also makes the single- note C/three-note ligature B-A-G of P3 the same pattern of that which follows it (single-note A/three-note ligature G-F-E) and that which starts the phrase (single-note D/three-note ligature C-B-A). The result of this change is a regularization of the line. The difference in the poetic meters of P1 and P3 doubles this result. P1’s text falls into an anapest, a dactyl, and a trochee, while P3’s text is four trochees (see Table 3.2 and Figure 3.12). Even though the two lines are the same number of syllables, P3 distributes its syllabic content in a very straightforward way. 27 Coldwell, “Jougleresses,” 54. 97 Figure 3.11: Change in repeated content Table 3.2: Types of syllabic stress in Mout m’abelist Type Syllables in Group Stress order Iamb 2 weak—strong Trochee 2 strong—weak Dactyl 3 strong—weak—weak Anapest 3 weak—weak—strong Figure 3.12: Poetic meter in P1 and P3 of M2 P1: “Je vous pri,” “da-me Ma-” “-roi-e” ------------irregular; all meters different P3: “U-ne” “da-me” “sim-(ple_et)” “choi-e” -------regular; all trochee This regularization of poetic meter and melodic pattern agrees with alternative definitions of “simple” and is an example of the use of compositional elements to illustrate textual meaning. Translated as “innocent” in Songs of the Women Trouvères, the French word “simple” can also be directly translated into the English “simple,” and it can even mean “peasant.” “Dame Maroie” 98 is addressed with grander scalar movement than the imaginary, “simple” woman of P3. It could be that Margot was giving Maroie respect with the more technically challenging scale or making a joke by contrasting an aristocratic lady (Maroie) to a “peasant.” These changes to the melodic and poetic makeup of lines P1 and P3 have a large effect on the overall meanings of P1 and P3. There are other meaningful connections between M2 and its text, such as Margot’s illustration of the word “contre” through distribution of notes over syllables. “Contre,” translated as “against,” is situated on the fifth and sixth syllables of P2. The fourth syllable is over a three- note ligature that follows three other notes, which gives a triplet-like feeling to the first four syllables of the line (see Figure 3.13). Beginning on “contre,” each syllable has two notes, so the last half of the line has a duple-like feeling. This three-to-two switch mimics the meaning of “contre,” setting triple and duple feelings against each other. Figure 3.13: Example of “contre” / “against” in distribution of triple and duple notes M2 also exemplifies madness in its range and wide leaps. In Mason’s examination of another jeu-parti, he explains that the range of its frons—an eleventh—is the largest range that 99 occurs in any frons of any jeu-parti.28 M2 has a range of a ninth in the frons, and in the cauda that range is expanded to a twelfth. So, M2 uses a very broad range, which, as Mason suggests, imitates a lack of reason.29 A significant number of leaps also appear in M2—the fourth jump followed by a third jump in P2 and P4, for example. Leaping around as much as this melody does, and traversing a massive range throughout the song, highlight the concept of madness. Conclusion The intersections of meaning and melody examined in this chapter raise an interesting question about the method by which jeux-partis were written. As the primary singer, one would expect Margot to write a melody that would reinforce the victory of her argument. But as we have seen, T1 is overcome by T2, which, if they corresponded spatially to the women’s arguments, would mean that Margot constructed a melody that foreshadowed the victory of Maroie’s argument rather than her own. Was Margot’s musical indication that the primary theme, and therefore the primary argument, would lose to the second theme, or the second argument, a signal that she would not win? Could Margot’s indication of a victor be evidence of pre-conception? After all, the initial word that corresponds with T2, the “winning” theme, is “Maroie.” While some scholars have questioned the degree to which jeux-partis were improvised, no consensus has been reached on the topic, and it appears that more research is needed.30 All around, Je vous pri is an example of music communicating social values, the depth at which trouvères wrote, and the talent of women who invented in this musical culture. Maroie’s 28 Mason, “Trouver et Partir,” 225. 29 Ibid., 225. 30 For example, Phillips, “Singers without Borders,” 62; and Jennifer Saltzstein, “Cleric-trouvères and the Jeux- Partis of Medieval Arras,” Viator 43, no. 2 (2012): 148. 100 stance is directly incongruent with the courtly lover presented in most chansons d’amours, and although Margot’s is in some ways aligned with the lover, her argument directly protests typical characterizations of la Dame in those songs. La Dame is never given a voice, but men portray her as exceedingly powerful. Margot’s silent woman is powerful, but she also has a voice and is characterized as a feeling, emotional person. Neither interlocutor fully abides by the principles of courtly love or of its depiction in chansons d’amours. Although Maroie and Margot situate their debate as hypothetical, any reflection on gender roles was ultimately a reflection on their own lives within a more collective experience. Women, framing their arguments as impersonal, created a space for themselves to be agents in society, exploring diverse topics and playing around with the existing dialogue without personal consequences. Speculating about courtly code, they debated the rules they were apparently expected to follow as ladies themselves. This sort of act—questioning the validity of what is considered appropriate or not—is one that contributed to the constant evolution of social dialogue, regardless of each opponents’ position. By keeping their songs away from personal details as much as possible, these women remained safe while actively disrupting and destabilizing social norms. 101 CONCLUSION In this thesis, I’ve discussed what we can learn about Maroie de Dergnau from musical and non-musical sources. She was from an aristocratic family, which makes sense considering the status of other identifiable women trouvères such as Blanche de Castile. She was also connected to powerful ecclesiastical figures from the Warenghien family: Elizabeth, who donated large sums to the Church; and Michel, who was the bishop of Tournai. Her connections with these two families and with Andrieu de Contredit suggest that she may have been a landowner and she was probably born around 1225. Living in Flanders during the thirteenth century, Maroie would have had fairly significant rights and opportunities. Maroie was also the author of two, maybe three, trouvère songs that we know of, connecting her to a network of musicians and showing us her creative, complex compositional and poetic techniques. The turning, changing, and unsettled melody of her chanson d’amour Mout m’abelist (RS 1451) reaffirms double meanings in its text. Although only a single stanza survives, the fact that it is the only musically notated song among several unnotated songs indicates that it was well known. This probable popularity might be why Andrieu de Contredit formulated his own chanson d’amour Bonne, belle, et avenant (RS 262) in response to Maroie, connecting their songs with mirrored language and semantic indicators, like the word “retraire.” In Je vous pri, Dame Maroie (RS 1744), she debates Dame Margot over a popular topic in courtly discourse. In different ways, both singers advocate for women’s agency, and they build choice into their melodies to facilitate the communication of their meanings. Maroie arranges her poetry to cross tonal centers and illustrate the concept of madness, just as the melody as a whole illustrates the process of debate through thematic division. 102 The information we gain by examining Maroie’s music, poetry, and identity has implications for future research and may assist in learning about other trouvères. The connections between Maroie’s and Andrieu’s songs suggest that the existence of dialogic relations in chansons d’amours—a topic not yet explored—could have a broader presence in the genre. The existence of other dialogic genres within the trouvère repertoire, such as jeux-partis and pastourelles, would support this notion. It is common knowledge that intertextual relations are vastly important to medieval music and based on the call-and-response nature of Mout m’abelist and Bonne, belle, et avenant, it seems more likely that these relations are present in other chansons d’amours. This study also has implications for future research on the jeu-parti, and it would be valuable to examine other debates for illustrations of argumentation, madness, and agency. As mentioned in Chapter Three, Joseph Mason has found evidence of the depiction of argumentative process through invention and division in several debates,1 and my research has identified another such song, Je vous pri, which alludes to this process through its formulaic placement of thematic content. The piece is also an example of women’s thoughts regarding their own agency, women’s ability to adjust their own behavior to manipulate the system of fin amour, and their compositional prowess, creatively placing their messages to enhance meaning. The results of this study also forge avenues of inquiry for future research on women trouvères’ identities. For Maroie, the apparent changes and flexibilities in her family’s name—de Dergnau and de Verlinghem—might serve as clues in future searches. If her familial relations’ names were changing, it is possible that there could be records related to Maroie in which she is identified by another title. It would be difficult to prove that a source containing the name 1 Joseph W. Mason, “Trouver et Partir: The Meaning of Structure in the Old French Jeu-Parti,” Early Music History 40 (2022): 229. 103 Maroie de Verlinghem was referring to the same Maroie de Dergnau, but, if the record discussed topics such as music or rents in the city of Lille, her identity could be more obvious. It could also be fruitful to investigate the membership documents of the Carité de Notre Dame des Ardents of Arras for any of the names connected to Maroie in this study, particularly of Philippe de Dergnau/de Verlinghem, Jean de Dergnau/de Verlinghem, and the Warenghiens.2 Women’s voices, while valuable and meaningful in their own right, take on greater significance when we strive to understand them against the backdrop of contemporary society. Scholarly understanding of trouvère culture also naturally changes when we accept and consider all its participants. Our knowledge of the women involved in this tradition grows each time we listen to their voices and raise new questions about what we hear, their words reflecting not only on trouvère culture but on their society as a whole, speaking their experiences across the centuries between us. 2 This was studied in detail by Brianne Dolce in her article “’Soit hom u fem’: New Evidence for Women Musicians and the Search for the ‘Women Trouvères,’” Revue de Musicologie 106, no. 2 (2020): 301-328. 104 APPENDIX 105 LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS CONSULTED MS A: Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 657 MS a: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Regina MS 1490 MS M: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France fr. 844 MS T: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France fr. 12615 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY 107 BIBLIOGRPHY Primary Sources Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 657. Bibliothèque Virtuelle des Manuscrits Médiévaux. Accessed November 24, 2020, https://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=ecran&panier=false&reproductionId =19136&VUE_ID=1681013&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes=4x3&page=14&angle= 0&zoom=moyen&tailleReelle= Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr. 844. Gallica. Accessed November 24, 2021. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84192440/f377.item.r=francais%20844.zoom#. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr. 12615. Gallica. Accessed November 24, 2021. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007945/f349.item.r=12615. PAT/7/74. “Sauf-conduit accordé par Jean, comte de Namur.” Archives Municipales de Lille. Accessed November 30, 2021. https://archives.lille.fr/ark:/74900/a011429097755rp37x2/6452433313. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Regina MS 1490. Digital Vatican Library. Accessed November 24, 2021. https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1490. Secondary Sources Aubrey, Elizabeth. “Reconsidering ‘High Style’ and ‘Low Style in Medieval Song.” Journal of Music Theory 52, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 75-122. Bec, Pierre. “’Trobairitz’ et chansons de femme: Contribution à la Connaissance du Lyrisme Féminin au Moyen Âge.” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 22 (1979): 235-262. _____. La Lyrique française au moyen âge, XIIe-XIIIe siècles: Contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1977). Beck, Jean and Louise Beck. Le Manuscrit du Roi: fonds français no. 844 de la Bibliothèque Nationale: publié en facsimile avec une introduction par Jean Beck et Louise Beck. 1938. Reprint, New York: Broude Brothers, 1970. Bernau, Anke. “Medieval Antifeminism.” In The History of British Women’s Writing, 700-1500, volume 1, edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt, 72-84. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 108 Bibring, Tovi. “Of Swords and Rings: Genital Representation as Defining Sexual Identity and Sexual Liberation in Some Old French Fabliaux and Lais,” in Genealogies of Identity: Interdisciplinary Readings on Sex and Sexuality, edited by Margaret Sönser Breen and Fiona Peters, 151-167. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Blieck, Gilles. “Le Château Dit de Courtrai à Lille de 1298 à 1339: Une Citadelle Avant l’Heure,” Bulletin Monumental 155, no. 3 (1997): 185-206. Braun, Georg. “Lille, Insula, Rÿssele.” 33x43 cm. “Gallica.” 1645. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53178859j/f1.item.zoom#. Accessed April 5, 2022. Brown, Mary Frances. “Critique and Complicity: Metapoetical Reflections on the Gendered Figures of Body and Text in the Roman de la Rose.” Exemplaria 21, no. 2 (2009), 129- 159. Brumana Pascale, Biancamaria. “Le musiche nei jeux-partis francesi.” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Perugia 13 (1975–76): 509–72. Butterfield, Ardis. Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Callahan, Christopher. “Collecting Trouvère Lyric at the Peripheries: The Lessons of MSS Paris, BnF fr. 20050 and Bern, Burgerbibliothek 389.” Textual Cultures 8, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 15-30. Campbell, Kimberlee. “Acting Like a Man: Performing Gender in Tristan de Nanteuil.” In Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, edited by Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, and E. Jane Burns, 79-89. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007. Coldwell, Maria. “Jougleresses and Trobairitz: Secular Musicians in Medieval France.” In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, 39-61. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Courtenay, William J. Rituals for the Dead: Religion and Community in the Medieval University of Paris. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. Cyrus, Cynthia J. and Olivia Carter Mather. “Rereading Absence: Women in Medieval and Renaissance Music.” College Music Symposium 38 (1998): 101-117. Dell, Helen. Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008. Desmond, Karen. “Refusal, the Look of Love, and the Beastly Woman of Machaut’s Balades 27 and 38.” Early Music History 32 (2013): 71-118. 109 Dillon, Emma. “Unwriting Medieval Song.” New Literary History 46, no. 4 (Autumn 2015), 595-622. ______. The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260-1330. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Dinaux, Arthur. Les Trouvères Cambrésiens. Paris: Téchener, 1837. Dolce, Brianne. “’Soit hom u feme’ New Evidence for Women Musicians and the Search for the ‘Women Trouvères.’’ Revue de Musicologie 106, no. 2 (September 2020): 301-328. Doss-Quinby, Eglal. The Lyrics of the Trouvères: A Research Guide (1970-1990). New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. ______“’Rolan, de ceu ke m’avez/parti dirai mon samblant’: The Feminine Voice in the Old French jeu-parti.” Neophilologus 84, no. 4 (1999), 497-516. Doss-Quinby, Eglal, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubrey. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Duvivier, Charles. Actes et Document Anciens Intéressant la Belgique. Bruxelles: P. Weissenbruch, 1903. _______. “La dîme au Moyen Age. Correspondance de Jeanne de Constantinople au sujet de la dîme de Vlissegem.” Revue d'Histoire et d'Archéologie 2 (1860): 180-212. Edwards, Jennifer C. Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte- Croix. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Enders, Jody. “The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain.” Fifteenth Century Studies 27 (2002): 93-112. Evans, Beverly J. “Women Trouvères: Just the Same Old Refrains?” Neophilologus 90 (2006): 1-11. Fassler, Margot. Music of the Medieval West: Western Music in Context. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2014. Flammermont, Jules. Lille et le Nord au Moyen Age. Lille: Libraire Centrale, 1888. Fromont, Auguste and August de Meunynck. Histoire des Canonniers de Lille. Lille: L. Quarré, 1892. 110 Galesloot, Louis. “Cinq chartes inédites de l'empereur Baudouin de Constantinople, du mois de février 1204-1205.” Compte-rendu des Séances de la Commission royale d'Histoire 4, no. 3 (1876): 139-154. Galloway, Penelope. “‘Discreet and Devout Maidens’: Women’s Involvement in Beguine Communities in Northern France, 1200-1500.” In Medieval Women in their Communities, edited by Diane Watt, 92-115. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997. Gaunt, Simon. “Discourse Desired: Desire, Subjectivity, and Mouvance in Can vei la lauzeta mover,” in Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, edited by Jamed J. Paxon and Cynthia A. Gravlee, 89-94. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1998. Gravdal, Kathryn. “Mimicry, Metonymy, and ‘Women’s Song’: the Medieval Woman Trobairitz.” Romantic Review 83, no. 4 (1992): 411-426. Grimbert, Joan Tasker. “Chrétien the Trouvère: Elements of Jeux-Partis in Cligés.” Faux Titre 361 (2010): 109-123. Guesnon, Adolphe. Nouvelles Recherches Biographiques sur les Trouvères Artésiens, Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, 1902. Accessed January 19, 2022. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k66790c.texteImage Haggh-Huglo, Barbara. “The Aldermen’s Registers as Sources for the History of Music in Ghent.” In La la la… Maistre Henri, edited by Christine Ballman and Valerie Dufour, 27-54. Tournhout: Brepols, 2009. Haines, John. Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hautcoeur, Édouard. Cartulaire de l’eglise collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille. Vol. 1. Paris: A. Picard, 1894. ______. Documents liturgiques et nécrologiques de l’église collégiale de Saint-Pierre de Lille. Paris: A. Picard, 1895. Hindley, Alan, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy. Old French-English Dictionary Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Holsinger, Bruce. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Huot, Sylvia. From Song to Book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Inselin, Charles. “Plan de Lille, de la Citadelle, et de ses Environs.” Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département Cartes et Plans, GE D-15394. 1708. 111 Jeanroy, Alfred. Les origins de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge. Paris: Hachette, 1889. Kittell, Ellen E. “’Half as Much as a Man’? Gender Ideology and Practice in Medieval Flanders.” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 1 (Spring 2011), 132-154. Krueger, Roberta L. “Questions of Gender in Old French Courtly Romance.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, edited by Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2000): 132-149. Langfors, Arthur. Recueil Général des Jeux-Partis Français. Paris: Édouard Champion, 1926. Lambert, Véronique. De oorkonden van het Sint-Donatiaanskapittel te Brugge (9de eeuw-1300), Brussels: Koninklijke commissie voor geschiedenis, 2008. Leach, Elizabeth Eva. “Do Trouvère Melodies Mean Anything?” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 3-46. Long, Sarah. Music, Liturgy, and Confraternity Devotions in Paris and Tournai, 1300-1550 Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2021. Mason, Joseph W. “Structure and Process in the Old French Jeu-Parti.” Music Analysis 38, no. 1-2 (2019): 47-79. ______. “Trouver et Partir: The Meaning of Structure in the Old French Jeu-Parti.” Early Music History 40 (2022): 207-251. McDougall, Sara. Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Nelson, Deborah, and Hendrik van der Werf. The Songs Attributed to Andrieu Contredit d’Arras with a Translation into English and the Extant Melodies. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992. O’Sullivan, Daniel E. “Words With Friends, Courtly Edition: The Jeux-Partis of Thibaut de Champagne.” In Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature, edited by Serina Patterson, 61-78. New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2015. Paden, William D. “Manuscripts.” In A Handbook of the Troubadours, edited by F.R.P. Akenhurst and Judith M. Davis, 307-333. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. ______. “Introduction.” In The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, edited by William D. Paden, 1-30. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Page, Christopher. “Listening to the trouvères.” Early Music 25, no. 4 (November 1997): 638- 650+653-656+659 112 Parker, Ian R. “Troubadour and Trouvère Song: Problems in Modal Analysis,” Revue Belge de Musicologie 31 (1977): 20-37. Paul, Thomas. “Warenghien (Camille de) — Un prélat au XIIIe siècle. Michel de Warenghien, évêque de Tournai, de 1284 à 1291, 1919.” Revue du Nord 6, no. 21 (February 1920), 49- 52. Peraino, Judith. “Re-placing Medieval Music.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 2 (2001): 209-264. Petersen-Dyggve, Holger. Onomastique des Trouvères. 1934. Reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1973. Pfeffer, Wendy. “Attributing Another Song to Maroie de Diergnau de Lille.” Textual Cultures 14, no. 2 (2021): 115-133. Phillips, Jenna. “Singers Without Borders: A Performer’s Rotulus and the Transmission of Jeux Partis.” Journal of Medieval History 45, no. 1 (2019): 55-79. Pierson Prior, Sandra. “’Kar des dames est avenue / L’aventure’: Displacing the Chivalric Hero in Marie de France’s Eliduc,” in Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, edited by James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, 123-139. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1998. Plumley, Yolanda. The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Rawcliffe, Carole. “A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work.” Gender & History 21, no. 1 (April 2009): 147-169. Rosenberg, Samuel N. “The ‘Envoi’ in Trouvère Lyric, with Particular Attention to the Songs of Gace Brulé.” Romance Philology 58, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 51-67. Rosenberg, Samuel N. and Eglal Doss-Quinby. “Philological Complement to Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles (BnF f. fr. 12615), Part 1: Language of the Scribe and Versification.” Textual Cultures 10, no. 2 (2016-2018): 51-75. Ruisard, Rachel. “Women’s Voices in a Fourteenth-Century Chansonnier: Representation and Performance in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 308.” PhD Diss., University of Maryland, 2021. Saint-Léger, Alexandre de. Histoire de Lille: des Origines à 1789. Lille: Émile Raoust, 1942. Saltzstein, Jennifer. The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. 113 ______. “Rape and Repentance in Two Medieval Motets.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 70 no. 3 (Fall 2017): 583-616. ______. “Songs of Nature in Medieval Northern France: Landscape, Identity, and Environment.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72, no. 1 (April 2019): 115-180. Schutte, Valerie. “The Politics of Dedicating Printed Books and Manuscripts to King Henry VII.” Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 19 (2016), 149-173. Sivéry, Gérard. “Un ‘triangle d’or’ lillois vers 1325?,” Revue du Nord 344 (March 2002): 7-24. Skinner, Patricia. “Gender and Poverty in the Medieval Community.” In Medieval Women in their Communities, edited by Diane Watt, 204-221. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997. Société de l’Histoire de France. Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d’Angleterre Paris: Jules Renouard, 1849. Société d’Études de la Province de Cambrai. Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Marquette. Vol. 1. Lille: Secrétariat de la Société, 1937. Spanke, Hans. G. Raynauds Bibliographie des Altfranzösischen Liedes. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1955. Stewart, Michelle F. “The Melodic Structure of Thirteenth-Century ‘Jeux-Partis.’” Acta Musicologica 51, no. 1 (January-June 1979): 86-107. Symes, Carol. A Common Stage: Theater & Public Life in Medieval Arras. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. Tischler, Hans. Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition. Vols. 9 and 11. Neuhausen: American Institute of Musicology and Hänssler-Verlag, 1997. ______. “Mode, Modulation, and Transposition in Medieval Songs.” The Journal of Musicology 13, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 277-283. Tyssens, Madeleine. “Voix de Femmes dans la Lyrique d’Oïl,” in Femmes, Mariages-Lignages, XII-XIV Siècles: Mélanges Offerts à Georges Duby (Brussels: De Boeck University, 1992), 373-387. University of Michigan Library. “Vidimus.” Middle English Compendium Dictionary. Last modified November 2019. Accessed March 24, 2022. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english- dictionary/dictionary/MED51119#:~:text=Definitions%20(Senses%20and%20Subsenses) ,Show%202%20Quotations. 114 Van Blommestein, Sharmain. “Medieval Redemptive Suffering: Female Mystical Expressions of Pain and Pleasure and Medieval Society’s Influence on Mystical Spirituality.” The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society 4 (2014): 39-53. Van Hende, Edouard. Lille et ses institutions communales de 620 à 1804: avec annotations et tables. Lille: Chez tous les Libraires, 1888. Watt, Diane. Women, Writing, and Religion in England and Beyond, 650-1100. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Werf, Hendrik van der. The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères: A Study of the Melodies And Their Relation to the Poems. Utrecht: A. Oosthoek’s Uitgeversmaatschappij NV: 1972. Zumthor, Paul. “An Overview: Why the Troubadours?.” In A Handbook of the Troubadours, edited by F.R.P. Akenhurst and Judith M. Davis, 11-20. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. 115