men), although far more important than such a comparison would suggest for our
understanding of medieval poetry and life. Most of the trobairitz about whom we have
information were active during the period from ca. 1180 to 1260, that is, they began later
and stopped earlier than the troubadours, whose recorded activity begins with Guilhem
IX ca. 1100 and continues to 1300 or later. This disparity may reflect the evolution of the
status of women, who briefly regained during this period some of the rights they had
earlier enjoyed, before their situation continued its long decline toward a legal status
comparable with that of minors.
Stylistically, the trobairitz address the beloved directly more often than do
troubadours; they prefer more negative language, in order to express frustration,
deprivation, or strong feelings in general; and they tend to use more verbs in the
subjunctive mood, expressing uncertainty or desire, or in the past tense, referring to real
relationships that have a past, whereas the troubadours tend more toward factual
statements about the present. The trobairitz provide a dramatic corrective to the image of
the lady in many male songs of fin’amors, since they are neither distant, unapproachable,
nor speechless. Their songs provide a key to understanding fin’amors, both male and
female, more adequately than it has traditionally been understood.
The male lyrics of courtly love that echoed across Europe were rarely interrupted by a
female voice. Marie de France was a contemporary author of narrative poetry, but among
the trouvères, or lyric poets of the Langue d’oïl, we find scarcely any women, although
the trouvères left as many songs as did the troubadours. Nor do we find women writers of
medieval lyric in Galician, Castilian, German, or English. It is probable that one Italian
woman, the “Compiuta Donzella,” wrote during the period of the dolce stil nuovo, but
she left us only three sonnets. The fictional women’s songs, or chansons de femme, in
French, Galician, and German seem to have been written by men. Most medieval women
who wrote did so in Latin (Héloïse, Hildegard of Bingen) or, if in the vernacular, on
religious subjects (Catherine of Siena, Marguerite Porete); women began to write on
secular subjects in other languages only in the 15th century (Florencia Pinar, Christine de
Pizan). The trobairitz provide a rare avenue of approach to secular female experience in
the 12th and 13th centuries.
William D.Paden
[See also: TROUBADOUR POETRY; VIDAS AND RAZOS; WOMEN’S SONGS]
Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, Laurie Shephard, and Sarah White, eds. Songs of the Women
Troubadours: An Edition and Translation. New York: Garland, 1995.
Rieger, Angelica, ed. Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen höfischen Lyrik:
Edition des Gesamtkorpus. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991.
Schultz[-Gora], Oscar, ed. Die provenzalischen Dichterinnen: Biographien und Texte nebst
Anmerkungen und einer Einleitung. Leipzig: Fock, 1888.
Bogin, Meg. The Women Troubadours. New York: Paddington, 1976.
Paden, William D., ed. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
The Encyclopedia 1757