"Na Maria, pretz e fina valors": A New Argument for Female Authorship

“NA MARIA, PRETZ E FINA VALORS”: A NEW ARGUMENT FOR FEMALE AUTHORSHIP1 ALISON GANZE THE manuscript attribution of “Na Maria, pretz e fina valors” to Bietris de Roman has caused no small amount of controversy among critics, for even those who accept the attribution often struggle to account for what appears to be the sole Occitan canso, or courtly love lyric, written by one woman for another. The speaker in the poem praises “Lady Maria” for her beauty, nobility, and many other virtues; begs her to grant the speaker “so don plus ai d’aver gioi esperansa” (13), declares Maria to be the source of all her happiness and that “per vos vauc mantas ves sospiran ” (16); and implores that she not love any “entendidor truan” (20). The poem’s use of the love language characteristic of the canso has elicited a range of interpretations, from arguments that the poem is an expression of same-sex desire to outright denials of female authorship altogether.2 Yet few have considered whether the poem might be participating in conventions that readily accommodate the language of desire within the exchange of political and social fidelity. While no reading of “Na Maria” can offer conclusive evidence of the sex of its author, the 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Medieval Association of the Pacific Conference at the University of California-Los Angeles in March 2007, in a session honoring Dhira Mahoney; I am delighted to honor Dhira as mentor with this article on patronage between women. I would also like to thank the members of the Potter College Faculty Writing Group at Western Kentucky University for their helpful comments and suggestions. 2 Though one might be tempted to resolve the problem by concluding that “Na Maria” is in fact a song in praise of the Virgin Mary, there is little in the poem that substantiates a spiritual reading. For example, the terms “pretz” and “valor” used to describe the addressee generally refer to courtly worth in particular, and as Paterson points out, “valor” can also mean “estate” or “property” (“Fin’amor” 35). Moreover, it is difficult to imagine to what the “entendidor truan” might refer in the context of a Marian lyric. 23 one I submit here offers another means by which to reconcile female authorship with a female object of courtly devotion. Many readers who accept the manuscript attribution conclude that the poem must represent one of the few, if not the only, extant examples of a medieval lesbian love song. Indeed, in the biographical notes that accompany her edition of trobairitz poetry, Meg Bogin comments wryly that “Scholars have resorted to the most ingenious arguments to avoid concluding that [Bietris] is a woman writing a love poem to another woman” (176). John Boswell cites “Na Maria” as one of the “few poems exemplifying this [gay artistic] tradition” that survive into the thirteenth century (265), and Pierre Bec surmises that, if “Na Maria” is in fact written by a woman, then “ce serait sans doute le seul poème ‘lesbien’ de toute la lyrique Occitane” (198). The “if/then” nature of this argument is significant: for such readers, a lesbian author – or at least speaker – is the natural and logical conclusion, since a sexual relationship is taken for granted. Even those who acknowledge that we need not necessarily conflate the identities of poet and speaker still insist upon the poem’s queer nature. Bec sees “Na Maria” as a “contre-text,” a text that speaks against a culture’s dominant ideology “en conformité avec un code littéraire donné mais aussi en rupture avec lui” (8). For Tilda Sankovitch, as well, the poem strains against normative boundaries, regardless of the actual likelihood of Bietris’ lesbianism: Whether the poem is or is not an articulation of lesbian desire is less important than the ludic strategy that takes place here: a woman poet uses all the terms a troubadour might address to a woman, but instead of addressing them to a man, she speaks them to a woman. It is precisely the unsettling derailing of the reversal, the surprising twist imposed on the expected scheme, that brings out the ludic...