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  • Representing "Women's Songs" in Stories:Lyric Interpolations and Female Characters in Guillaume de Dole and the Roman de la Violette
  • Anna Kathryn Grau

In the thirteenth century, a number of new techniques arose to incorporate the lyrics of the troubadours and trouvères, a repertory central to the contemporary courtly ideology, into longer and more elaborate forms. Among the resulting works, romances that combine narrative and lyric, a technique often called lyric insertion or lyric interpolation, were relatively successful, and some fifty Old French examples survive.1 The Roman de la Rose (probably c. 1210), also known as Guillaume de Dole to differentiate it from the more famous work of Guillaume de Lorris, claims to be the first of these interpolated romances. It was quickly followed by the Roman de la Violette (c. 1227-1229), a work that betrays a close relationship with its predecessor. These two romances reflect an important moment in the history of the lyric: they provide contemporary comment on works about which we have few external sources. One avenue for exploring what the interpolated romance can tell us about the lyric is to examine the relationship between characters in the lyric song repertory and those of the romances that surround them. In this study, I will explore some of these relationships; in particular, I will show that the women of these romances are inextricably related to those of the lyrics. At times, it seems the authors develop their female characters directly from the ladies of the lyric world, working out the stories contained in the lyric on a larger narrative scale.

Narrative literature of the thirteenth century includes a number of experiments with the expansion and redeployment of lyric content. In thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian manuscripts, for example, troubadour songs are sometimes accompanied by introductory texts known as vidas and razos, which claim to narrate the lives of the poets and explain their reasons for writing individual songs. These framing texts take much of their material from details of the songs themselves, imaginatively expanding the story behind the song.2 The Roman du Chatelain de Couci, by the French poet Jakemes, is based on the fictionalized [End Page 33] life of a real trouvère and integrates several of the trouvère's songs. In the Jeu de Robin et Marion, one of the earliest vernacular plays with music, Adam de la Halle expanded the standard characters, generic characteristics and musical repertory of the Old French pastourelle into dramatic form, turning the stock figures of the song tradition into dramatic characters.3 But the Roman du Chatelain de Couci and the Jeu de Robin et Marion are often considered marginal to the tradition of interpolated romance because they feature the lyric repertory so prominently— they are elaborations of lyric rather than romances with some lyric content. Most narrative works with lyric insertions have been interpreted primarily as stories, with songs selected to enhance and enrich the containing narrative. The dominant story may or may not be affected by the lyric, but it is often taken for granted that the author gave priority to the narrative.

In the prologue to the first major work of this sort, Guillaume de Dole, the author Jean Renart encourages this interpretation:

For just as one dyes cloth red to increase its worth, just so has he added poems and their melodies to this Romance of the Rose, which is something quite new. It is so different from other works, being embroidered here and there with beautiful songs, that an uncouth person could never understand it.4

Taking their cue from Renart's words, modern critical responses to the repertory of interpolated romances emphasize the correlation or, often, the lack of correlation between song and story. Frequently, this concern centers on questions of the suitability of particular songs for the narrative. Why are these songs given to these characters at these moments? What aspect of the story does the song represent or enrich? For example, Maureen Boulton describes the use of lyric in terms of its contribution to the story, for expression, description or plot development, among other purposes.5 Particular lyric genres have also been seen to represent characters...

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