Elias (de) Fonsalada (fl. late 12th/first quarter of the 13th century) was a

troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...

from Bergerac in the

Périgord Périgord ( , ; ; oc, Peiregòrd / ) is a natural region and former province of France, which corresponds roughly to the current Dordogne department, now forming the northern part of the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It is div ...

(the Diocese of Périgueux according to his '' vida'').Egan, 32. His entire ''vida'', in original

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

, goes: ''N'Elias Fonsalada si fo de Bragairac, del avesquat de Peiregors. Bels hom fo molt de sa persona, e fo fils d'un borges que se fetz joglar; e n'Elias fo joglars atressi. No bon trobaire mas noellaire fo; e saup benestar entre la gen.'' Only two ''

cansos The ''canso'' or ''canson'' or ''canzo'' () was a song style used by the troubadours. It was, by far, the most common genre used, especially by early troubadours, and only in the second half of the 13th century was its dominance challenged by a ...

'' of his survive. His ''vida'' goes further in describing him as a handsome man of the middle class, the son of a

burgher Burgher may refer to: * Burgher (social class), a medieval, early modern European title of a citizen of a town, and a social class from which city officials could be drawn ** Burgess (title), a resident of a burgh in northern Britain ** Grand Bu ...

and

jongleur A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...

, who himself became a jongleur.Jones, 309. The biographer did not regard him as an accomplished ''trobaire'' (troubadour/composer/inventor of poetry) but as a ''noellaire''. This word has been open to interpretation. Boutière and Schutz in their French compilation of the ''vidas'' of the troubadours translate it as "auteur d'un genre particulier" (author of a particular genre) or "beau parleur" (good conversationalist). Later Levy traced its etymology to ''novelador'', "auteur de novelles" (author of ''novas'', novels), and Egan, in her English translation, has taken this up as "storyteller". A ''nova'' was probably a

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc. ...

, as opposed to lyric, work.Jewers, 195. Thus Elias' ''vida'' provides a rare glimpse of narrative vernacular writing in Occitan at the height of the troubadour art. The poem ''En Abriu'' is assigned to Elias in manuscript ''C'' (a 14th-century work now known as f.f. 856 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

).Gaunt et al., 324. This attribution, however, is contradicted by other sources and the poem is usually given to

Marcabru Marcabru (; fl. 1130–1150) is one of the earliest troubadours whose poems are known. There is no certain information about him; the two '' vidas'' attached to his poems tell different stories, and both are evidently built on hints in the poems; ...

Notes

Sources

*Egan, Margarita (ed. and trans.) ''The Vidas of the Troubadours''. New York: Garland, 1984. . *Gaunt, Simon; Harvey, Ruth; and Paterson, Linda M., edd. ''Marcabru: A Critical Edition''. Boydell & Brewer, 2000. *Jewers, Caroline. "The Name of the Ruse and the Round Table: Occitan Romance and the Case for Cultural Resistance." ''Neophilologus''. Vol. 81, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 187–200. *Jones, W. Powell
"The Jongleur Troubadours of Provence."
''Publication of the Modern Languages Association'', Vol. 46, No. 2. (Jun., 1931), pp. 307–311. {{authority control French troubadours 12th-century births 13th-century deaths People from Dordogne