Walter, Philippe, and David Lacroix, eds. and trans. Tristan et Iseut: les poèmes français, la saga
norroise. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990. [Includes editions and modern French translations of all
the medieval French poems, and a translation of the Norse saga.]
Baumgartner, Emmanuèle. Tristan et Iseut: de la légende aux récits en vers. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1987.
Ferrante, Joan M. The Conflict of Love and Honor: The Medieval Tristan Legend in France,
Germany and Italy. Paris: Mouton, 1973.
Shirt, David J. The Old French Tristan Poems: A Bibliographical Guide. London: Grant and
Cutler, 1980.
TRIVIUM/QUADRIVIUM
. See LIBERAL ARTS
TROBAIRITZ
. Although the term has been found only once in Old Occitan (in Flamenca, a 13th-c.
romance), in English “trobairitz” answers the need for a feminine alternative to
“troubadour,” which has been naturalized in En glish since the 18th century. The root is
trobar ‘to compose,’ and the suffix expresses the agent, either female (-airitz) or male (-
ador). Thus, “trobairitz” means “woman who composes” (Occitan lyric poetry).
We know about twenty trobairitz by name, and their corpus includes some thirty-two
songs. (These figures are vague because of the difficulty in distinguishing real trobairitz
from fictional characters, either named or anonymous, who speak in dialogue poems.)
Only two trobairitz left more than one song apiece: the Comtessa de Dia, who sings of
passionate love, happy or unhappy, in four cansos, or love songs, and Castelloza, who
adopts a melancholy, even masochistic, tone in three cansos of certain attribution and a
fourth that is anonymous in the manuscript. In another canso, Beatritz de Romans
addresses Lady Maria in language that seems warmly affectionate to some readers, while
others consider it lesbian. In a sirventes, or satire, Gormonda de Montpellier responds
vigorously to a diatribe against the Roman church by Guilhem Figueira, matching his
stanzaic form, his rhyme scheme, and many of his rhyming words while reversing his
polemical intention. In the genres in dialogue, the trobairitz debate questions of amorous
casuistry, usually with men, and often show greater willingness than the troubadours to
depart from courtly conventions in order to gain satisfaction in love or demonstrate their
independence. In one strikingly realistic exchange of coblas, or couplets, the sisters Alais
and Iselda ask Carenza whether they should marry, and she advises them to become
brides of Christ.
The trobairitz are fewer in number than troubadours (about 5 percent as many), and
their extant compositions are fewer still (about 1 percent as many as we have by the
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1756