Marcoat was a minor
Gascon 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 ''trobairit ...
and
joglar
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 flourished in the mid twelfth century. He is often cited in connexion with
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor ( – 1 April 1204; french: Aliénor d'Aquitaine, ) was Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II, and Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right from ...
and is placed in a hypothetical "school" of poetry which includes
Bernart de Ventadorn
Bernart de Ventadorn (also Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn; – ) was a French poet-composer troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music, his 1 ...
,
Marcabru,
Cercamon,
Jaufre Rudel,
Peire Rogier, and
Peire de Valeria
Peire de Valeira, Valeria, or Valera (fl. early–mid twelfth century) was a Gascon troubadour. Since troubadour poetry probably originated in northwest Aquitaine (Poitou and Saintonge) and first spread—within a generation—south i ...
among others. Of all his works, only two ''
sirventes
The ''sirventes'' or ''serventes'' (), sometimes translated as "service song", was a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry practiced by the troubadours.
The name comes from ''sirvent'' ('serviceman'), from whose perspective the song is allegedly wr ...
'' survive: and .
[Chambers, 90.]
Marcoat was an innovator building off the work of the contemporary Gascon Marcabru,
[Thiolier-Méjean, 114–123.] whose death he recalls in one of his works c. 1150. Nonetheless his works are very simple, the stanzas being composed of three heptasyllables rhyming in the form AAB.
It was he who first used the term ''sirventes'' to describe his poems;
the word appears in both of his surviving works, twice in one:
:
:
:
:. . .
:
:
:''.''
[Chambers, 91, from the poem ''Mentre m'obri eis huisel''.]
The meaning of these verses is obscure, as he was an early practitioner of the ''
trobar clus'' style.
[Bloch, 114.] According to himself, he wrote (contradictory verses).
He was a model for the later troubadour
Raimbaut d'Aurenga.
Sources
*Bloch, R. Howard
''Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages''.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. .
*Chambers, Frank M
''An Introduction to Old Provençal Versification''.Diane Publishing, 1985. .
*Dejeanne, Jean-Marie-Lucien. "Marcoat." ''Annales du Midi'', xv (1903).
*Harvey, Ruth. "Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Troubadours." ''The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries'', edd. Marcus Bull and Catherine Léglu. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. .
*Léglu, Catherine. "Moral and satirical poetry.
''The Troubadours: An Introduction''.edd. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. .
*Pfeffer, Wendy
Reviewof Suzanne Thiolier-Méjean, ''La Poétique des Troubadours: Trois Études sur le Sirventes'', in ''
Speculum'', 72:1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 230–231.
*Thiolier-Méjean, Suzanne. ''La poétique des troubadours: Trois études sur le sirventes''. Paris: Presse de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1994.
Notes
{{authority control
Gascons
12th-century French troubadours