L'Age de Parage: Essai sur le poétique et le politique en Occitanie au XIIIe siècle (review)

REVIEWS Eliza Miruna Ghil. L'Age de Parage: Essai sur le poétique et le politique en Occitanie au XZZIe siècle. University Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature 4. New York, Bern. Frankfurt, Paris: Peter Lang. 1989. Pp. Ix + 407. L'Age de Parage was conceived as a critical response to early scholarship on thirteenth-century Occitan literature. Rejecting previous claims that the political and religious upheavals of this period led to the decline of medieval Occitan poetry, Ghil argues that the first half of the thirteenth century actually witnessed a flowering of poetic activity. With particular emphasis on the relationship between literary form and ideological function, she presents the lyric and narrative corpus of "post-classical" Occitania as a creative response to a culture in crisis. The volume is divided into five chapters, the first of which provides an overview ofthe period's political and poetic context. Ghil describes both the major events of the Albigensian controversy and the modes of resistance evident in such forms as the sirventes. The poetic vitality of the period is convincingly demonstrated by an exhaustive list ofpatrons and troubadourswho continued to flourish even during the darkesthours ofthe Inquisition. It is noteworthy that Ghil refrains from interpreting texts as simple mirrors of the events that precipitated them; rather, she maintains that the poetic corpus manifests an ideological coherence lacking in the political reality of the time. This unified ideal had two primary components: first, a secular, anticlerical stance that resisted Roman supremacy without openly supporting the Cathars; and second, a sense of community that allowed for a more socially diverse public than that of the earlier troubadours. Subsequentchapters provide detailed analyses ofselected works from the early thirteenth century. Chapter Two is devoted to the Canso de la Crozadaby Guilhem de Tudela, a work that Ghil seeks to rehabilitate in the eyes of modem readers. Although the poet has been accused ofcrimes rangingfrom opportunism and collaboration to mediocre versification (see Dossat, Lafont and Martin-Chabot) Ghil focuses on the possible causes and ultimate effects of the text's ideological ambiguity. She notes in particular the tension between Guilhem's poetic models: adopting discursive strategies of both the 40 REVIEWS ecclesiastical chronicle and the twelfth-century Canso d'Antiocha, the Canso de la Crozada attempts to denounce heresy while at the same time engaging its public in the emotional unity characteristic ofthe epicmode. Rather than criticizing the resulting contradictions, Ghil insists that the text must be read in the context of its contemporary reception, a context characterized by fluctuating alliances and ideological uncertainty. While allowing for a certain degree of ambiguity, Ghil examines at length the tropes that confer unity upon Guilhem's work. Chapter Three examines the complex relationship between Guilhem's Canso and that of his anonymous continuator. Curiously, it is not until this portion of the book that Ghil discusses the term paratge (183 ff.). a concept essential to both the title and the book's earlier chapters. According to Ghil, the notion of paratge crystallized in the anonymous Canso, where it came to designate a web of social and political values including inheritance rights, lineage, and a mythical alliance between the interests of landed gentry and urban society. Chapter Four discusses early thirteenth-century Occitan lyric, specifically the sirventes and the tenso. Here. Ghil concentrates on the generic diversification of these established forms by analyzing a number oftexts in detail. Chapter Five, perhaps the least convincing section of the volume, presents the Nova de Flamenca as a subtle critique of French hegemony, an alternative model of behavior with morally subversive undertones. While the subversive potential of Flamenca is clear, Ghil tends to overstate the differences between northern and southern "sexual politics." Comparing Flamenca primarilywith Chretien's ErecetEnide, she portrays the French courtly tradition largely in terms of conjugal love, thereby neglecting the models ofadulterous love within Chretien's corpus as well as that of Marie de France or Thomas d'Angleterre. L'Age de Parage presents interesting and occasionally provocative re-readings of neglected Occitan works. Its principal strength lies in the detailed analyses of carefully chosen texts, all of which take into account such factors as political context, intertextual relations...