The first stanza and the refrain (''italics'') from the translation of Paden and Paden: A fucker who was not in love
With any girl but wanted to fuck
Always had a hard on, and was eager
To fuck any woman he could fuck.
He always had so strong an urge to fuck
    ''That he was called Sir Fucker,''
  ''A fucker, alas! unhappy and sad,''
  ''And he said, "He dies badly and lives worse''
    ''Who doesn't fuck the one he loves."''W. D. Paden and F. F. Paden (2007), ''Troubadour Poems from the South of France'' (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer), 238.

Tribolet was an obscure

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 ...

, known only for one song, the obscene ''Us fotaires que no fo amoros''. The song's

rubric A rubric is a word or section of text that is traditionally written or printed in red ink for emphasis. The word derives from the la, rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk, and originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts from the 13th cent ...

was read as ''t'bolet'' by Giulio Bertoni, who identified its composer as

Tremoleta Tremoleta was a Catalan troubadour mentioned by the Monge de Montaudon in his satire of contemporary troubadours (''c''.1195). No works attributed to him survive, but many scholars have suggested identifying him with one of the known troubadours. Th ...

, but Alfred Jeanroy suggested the reading "Tribolet", which is widely accepted. He also suggested that the composition attributed to him is a

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...

of a piece now lost.Alfred Jeanroy (1934), ''La poésie lyrique des troubadours'' (Toulouse: Privat). The song is preserved in one

chansonnier A chansonnier ( ca, cançoner, oc, cançonièr, Galician and pt, cancioneiro, it, canzoniere or ''canzoniéro'', es, cancionero) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings o ...

(''G'', folio 128) dating from the final third of the thirteenth century, the same period in which the song may have been written.W. D. Paden and F. F. Paden (2007), ''Troubadour Poems from the South of France'' (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer), 238. The phrase "the one he loves" (''le qui ama'') found in the ninth and eighteenth verses has caused some confusion, since ''le'' seems masculine: "the one anhe loves." On this reading, it appears that the composer is a frustrated homosexual, who has plenty of sex with women but misses sex with the man he desires. It has been argued that an overt expression of homosexuality would have been impossible in a medieval court setting; the poet, however, may mean merely to hint at it.William E. Burgwinkle (1997), ''Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the Troubadour Razo Corpus'' (New York and London: Garland), p. 24. Francesco Carapezza, however, argues that just as ''celes'' ("any woman") is an aberrant form of the usual ''celas'', so ''le'' is just an unusual form of feminine ''la'', in which case the poem is a comic exaggeration of heterosexual lust. According to C. H. Grandgent, the masculine form ''le'' may indicate influence from

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

, and François Zufferey has catalogued other instances of the normal masculine ''lo'' replaced by ''le'' in

Old Occitan Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label=Occitan language, Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteen ...

Notes

External links

Tribolet's only extant work
at trobar.org {{Authority control 13th-century French troubadours Medieval LGBT history