XII - Bel m’es can s’esclarzis l’onda

Summary

1 MS: a¹ (300-301) Marcabruus

Analysis of the manuscript

The song survives only in an imperfect copy in which the scribe made a number of careless errors, some of which were corrected by himself (see for example stanzas IV and V) and others by the corrector (see for example lines 45–48). In several passages, the exact nature of the corrector’s interventions is hard to determine: see for example lines 12 and 34 and the notes. Line 20 is hypermetric and this suggests that the error was already present in the thirteenth-century exemplar (see the note to this line). Line 16 repeats the rhyme word of line 6.

Versification

Frank, Repértoire, 538.3: a7’ b7 b8 a7’ c7. Nine coblas unissonans, with two tornadas of two lines each.

Previous scholarship

Appel, ‘Zu Marcabru’, pp. 408-9, 466; Bertoni, ‘Due note’, pp. 648-49; Boissonnade, ‘Personnages’, pp. 217–18; Franz, ‘Marcabru’, p. 14; Gaunt and Harvey, ‘Text and context’, pp. 87–88; Hackett, ‘Le problème’, p. 228; Harvey, Marcabru, pp. 140–53; Harvey, ‘Fals’ amor’, pp. 63–65; Hölzle, Kreuzzügef II, p. 690; Lazzerini, ‘Marcabru’, pp. 78-79, 87; Lewent, ‘Kreuzlied’, p. 336; Lewent, ‘Beiträge’, pp. 327–28; de Lollis, ‘Proposte’, pp. 155–58; Mölk, Tmhar clus, p. 73; Paterson, Troubadours, p. 30; Topsfield, Troubadours, pp. 74–75.

There have been no detailed analyses of this poem as a whole.

Dating

In lines 46–49 as edited by Dejeanne (‘Scl segnoriu[s] de Gironda/ poia, …’ ‘If the lordship of the Gironde rises, …’), Boissonnade saw a reference to the rise in the fortunes of William X of Aquitaine in the period 1135–36, following his reconciliation with St Bernard (‘Personnages’, p. 217). According to Boissonnade, his good fortune included the bloodless reconquest of Gascony (1135–36), alliance with his erstwhile enemy Geoffrey of Anjou (September 1136), and the marriage of his sister Agnes to Ramiro II of Aragon (October 1135) (see also Gaunt and Harvey, ‘Text and context’, p. 97 note 11). This seemed to place the poem’s composition in the period following the summer of 1135. Appel (‘Zu Marcabru’, p. 409) pointed out that the ‘seignoriufs] de Gironda’ could also refer to Louis VII, in which case the dating of the pièce would be uncertain (after 1137).

The only secure troubadour lyric reference to the Gironde, however, is Guilhem de Bergueda, XXV, 4 (‘crossing the estuary’; see Riquer, § 59).