Troubadours During the French Renaissance

¶ … troubadours during the French Renaissance

A male composer and performer of Occitan lyrical poetry of High Middle Ages i.e. The period of 1130-1350 was known as troubadour. Troubadour is etymologically masculine gender, the female composer and performer of the Occitan lyrical poetry was known as trobairitz. The traditional troubadour performing system began in Occitan but it spread through Italy and Spain successfully (Marisa, 45).

Troubadours' poetries or songs are mainly concerned with the subjects of chivalry and courtly love of male or female. Troubadours may seem to be satirical or vulgar too, often they represent bold expression of human desire for love in very expressive way. Troubadours are the clear examples of the changes that renaissance brought in the French culture. As troubadours are essentially a subject of French renaissance, they are meant to be perfect example of rejection of public, conventional, social forms and to adopt and embrace private, novel, individual inventions; to create one's own fashion, not simply accept the fashions of others (Stone, 71). In order to understand the significance of troubadours during the renaissance period, it is very important to understand the changes and difference that was brought by the renaissance in the western culture that created a rift between the medieval age and the modern culture.

Many analysts including Burckhardt suggest that the Middle Ages were a primitive stage of human evolution during which, major importance was given to the collectivistic approach of life where the individual human was insignificant (Stone, 75). With the changes that were brought up during the renaissance, the individual thinking improved and the society as a whole started diversifying, decentralizing, giving more importance to the individualistic desires, skills, specialties and endeavors. Instead of following the crowd and working restlessly to reassure the collective identity, the individuals started looking and thinking for their own, working for their improvement and satisfaction. Individuals started rejecting the long established social norms that restricted individuals from looking beyond the collective zone.

During the medieval ages, the main concern of people were races, people, party, family, or corporation, with the new breach of thinking brought in during renaissance period, people were influenced towards thinking about their own self as individual identities, individual started thinking of himself as one, alienated from the world. The renaissance brought a revolutionary approach in the individuals and provided them a liberal attitude to think towards themselves as a unique person and to try for their own individual identities. People started preferring to experiment with their own desires, tastes and needs and that brought in many innovations, alternative approaches and righteous rejection in many of the old collectivist approach of thinking towards common attitude of individuals towards life. (Stone, 83)

During the medieval ages, people were not so open hearted about their love-relations, expressions of desires was considered to be vulgar and anti-social. With renaissance, individuals found themselves with liberty to enjoy their values of desires and emotional needs along with bodily requirement of pleasure and purpose. Troubadours actually represent an example of that change in the social set up that signifies individualistic approach. Troubadours represent the rejection of social locks on the ability of people to be romantically in love. Italian critic Mario Casella also attempted to note the significance of troubadours as a special development of Augustinian Philosophy of individualistic approach. (Silverstein, 122)

The troubadours dealt with varied important subjects like war, politics, personal satire and other subjects, yet the main theme of remained love and affection towards women. Most of the ladies for which the troubadours were sung, were married. Only some exceptional troubadours sang for maiden girls. Thus, the concept of love touched through troubadours was conventional type and it rejected marriage as the major objective of love. Some of the genre of troubadours was very satirical and naughty in essence such as Alba, which is the song that is sung by a lover in the morning and often includes a watchman who warns the lover about the lady's jealous husband who is approaching towards them (Chaytor, 17)