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Un estratto dalla biografia Quando un uomo nasce maledetto (Archivio della Memoria e dell’Immaginario Siciliano AMIS - Le Stelle in Tasca ODV Catania), prima opera classificata nella sezione biografie del premio internazionale di scritture autobiografiche Thrinakìa.

The attribution of this love song to the troubadour from Rouergue, Daude de Pradas, according to the only Occitan testimony, i.e. song-book C, was considered impossible or at least suspicious by many scholars for the mere fact that its first verse is quoted, as a ‘chançon auvrignace’, in the “Roman de la Rose” (or Guillaume de Dole) attributed to Jean Renart and initially dated to the earliest years of the XIIIth century. However, in the light of the recent dating of Daude’s poetic activity between 1191 and 1242, the chronological criterion alone cannot resolve the issue of attribution. This paper, where a more conservative edition of the text than that by C. Appel (1890) is proposed, will now present for the first time codicological – i.e. order and sources of Daude’s section in Ms. C – as well as metrical, stylistic and musical data, on the basis of the notation present in Ms. W. The discussion leads to the hypothesis that the song might be the work of an author belonging to the group of Marcabru’s imitators and therefore relatively early (third quarter of the XIIth century), setting aside the isolated attribution to Daude de Pradas.

The article provides a commentary and a new interpretation of Garin lo Brun’s poem “Nueyt et jorn”. The unusual typology of this dialogical poem has led to problems concerning generic classification, since it starts with an introductory stanza in the first person, where the theme of the inner debate is presented, followed by the opposed precepts of ‘Mezura’ (Measure, Moderation) and ‘Leujaria’ (Levity) in reported speech; moreover, the two personifications always address the lyric subject without really speaking to each other. Composed around 1150, when a system of dialogical genres had not yet been fixed, “Nueyt et jorn” has been classified in different ways by scholars. The poem contains some archaic features which connect it to the Occitan ‘tenso’ specimen by Uc Catola and Marcabru, as well as to Guilhem IX’s ironically dilemmatic poem “Companho farai un vers convinen”. Futhermore, a closer examination of the fifth stanza’s ‘varia lectio’ provides evidence of the affinity between “Nueyt et jorn” and Marcabru’s didactic poem “Cortesamen vuelh comenzar”, thus leaving room for the hypothesis that the latter has been a clear and direct source of inspiration for Garin. The collected data allow for the assumption that “Nueyt et jorn” carries out a transposition of the biblical conflictus between vices and virtues in the courtly context of troubadour lyric.