The Beloved Lady in Medieval Galician-Portuguese and Occitan

Lyric Poetry

William D. Paden

La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and

Cultures, Volume 32, Number 2, Spring 2004, pp. 69-84 (Article)

Published by La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures,

and Cultures
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cor.2004.0031

For additional information about this article

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THE BELOVED LADY IN MEDIEVAL
GALICIAN-PORTUGUESE AND OCCITAN
LYRIC POETRY

William D. Paden
Northwestern University
Studies of the beloved lady in medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric
poetry have contrasted that figure sharply widi the corresponding one
in the poetry of the Occitan troubadours.1 In an influential article on
the terms dona and senhor in die cantigas de amor, Mercedes Brea pos-
ited that the lady in Occitan poetry was an aristocrat, an authentic
feudal lady or the wife of a feudal lord, and always married, but found
that the same features cannot be deduced from die lyric corpus in
Galician-Portuguese, where the lady's noble origin is implicit in very
few cases and she is explicitly married only occasionally. Usually noth-
ing in die context allows us to suppose one tiling or die odier (Mercedes
Brea, 167-68). María del Carmen Pallares Méndez followed Brea in a
study of the lives of women in medieval Galicia (32), referring for
Occitan to the historian Georges Duby:
Georges Duby sintetiza así o esquema do amor cortés: "Un
personaxe feminino ocupa o centro do cadrò. E unha 'dama'.
O termo derivado do latín domina, significa que esta muller
ocupa unha posición dominante e, asemade, define a súa
situación: está casada". (31)2

1 I shall identify texts in Galician-Portuguese by reference to Lirica profana galego-

portuguesa, abbreviated LP, and quote from that edition. I shall identify Occitan texts by
reference to Pillet and Carstens, abbreviated as P-C, with reference to the edition I have used.
- Pallares Méndez does not identify' the source of the quotation in Duby. The gist of
it recurs in his characterization of "l'amour que l'on dit courtois": "Voici la figure: un
homme, un 'jeune'.... Cet homme assiège, dans l'intention de la prendre, une dame.

Ea corónica 32.2 (Spring, 2004): 69-84

70William D. PadenLa corónica 32.2, 2004

Vicenç Beitran has drawn a similar contrast between the lady of the
cantiga de a?nor and die lady in Occitan:
Se comparámo-la descrición da dama coa dos seus modelos
provenzais resulta, pois, notablemente emprobrecida. Desa-
pareceron tódolos componentes físicos e substituíronse por
substantivos abstractos, cun feixe de cualificativos de carácter
intensificador. Pero son outras moitas as cousas que desaparecen
do ámbito textual da cantiga, por exemplo o estado civil da
dama cantada. (29)
For Beltran there is evidendy no doubt diat die Occitan troubadours
were explicit about die lady's civil status.3
These specialists in Galician-Portuguese make die contrast widi
Occitan without extending their scrutiny to the texts in that language,
relying instead on specialists in Occitan, or a historian and generalist
like Duby, who in turn relies on Occitan specialists before him. Al-
diough diis procedure is perfecdy reasonable, it neverdieless entails
die risk that if diese scholars in Galician-Portuguese had examined the
Occitan texts diemselves with die same open-mindedness diey bring
to dieir own field, they might have found something different. They
might, in fact, have found that the evidence for die identity of die
beloved woman -eiuier her civil status, her personal appearance, her
personality, or indeed any characteristics by which she might be rec-
ognized or known- in Occitan is surprisingly like the evidence in
Galician-Portuguese/
The opinion represented by Duby is widespread, of course, but it
has never been uncontested. As early as 1896 Joseph Bédier argued
that troubadour songs are really so vague as to apply to all die situa-

c'est-à-dire une femme mariée, par conséquent inaccessible". On the preceding page Duby
acknowledges that this form of love "est d'abord un objet littéraire", and adds, "je n'ai, de
ces formes littéraires, qu'une connaissance, si je puis dire, seconde" (Duby, 74-75).
3 One could add Pichel (33-35), Vilhena, and others.
4 Heur prefaces his study ofthe "Portrait de la dame" by contrasting Galician-Portu-
guese poetry with lyric in Medieval Latin, Occitan, Italian and French, all of which he
characterizes with "la classique et traditionnelle descriptio mulieris" (439). Heur refers to the
work of Bruyne and Spina. Bruyne (2: 1 73-202) surveys the work ofgrammarians and poets
in Latin and French, especially Matthieu de Vendôme, but makes no reference to lyric
poetry in French, Occitan or Galician-Portuguese. Spina discusses descriptio puellae with
reference to poems in Latin, Occitan, French and Galician-Portuguese, but observes their
lack ofspecificity, except for those in the satirical vein: "Há, tanto na lírica occitànica como
na galaico-portugêsa, ao lado de um retrato com cores carregadas, um retrato moral vago
e um retrato físico sem significaçâo" (106).
 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetry7 1
tions that life offers - to love that is guilty or innocent, successful or
diwarted, and for a woman who is either free or committed to an-
other. The troubadours, Bédier wrote (171, n. 1), strip passion of all
its individual qualities in order to sing only the aspiration to love. But
despite Bédier the view that the lady was married and higher in rank
than die troubadour gained strength in the work of influential figures
such as Gaston Paris, Alfred Jeanroy5 and CS. Lewis (2).6 Eventually,
however, signs of resistance began to appear. A.R. Press objected diat
die historical evidence that the troubadour loved a married lady is
weak. I myself added diat the literary evidence is also weak, and that
we are ill advised to take a generality based on no strong evidence at
all as the key to our understanding of a major cultural phenomenon.7
As for the related idea that "adulterousyíwWwo/í was widely practiced
in the South of France not only in poetry but also in real life", which
starts from the assumption that the troubadour loved a married lady,
the historian Henry Ansgar Kelly declared it "completely unproven
and unlikely" (322). On the literary side Paul Zumthor wrote, "No
serious indication justifies die generalizations of diose who speak of
the 'adulterous love' of the troubadours" (15).
In a recent exchange I debated die issue with Don Monson, who
represented die view diat has become die usual one.3 One text to which
Monson and I bodi returned was a passage in Bernart de Ventadorn:
Cazutz sui e mala merce,
et ai ben faich co-I fols en pon;
e non sai per que m'esdeve,
mas car pojei trop contr'amon.9

5 Jeanrov did not avoid contradicting himself in this matter. At one point, following
the English essayist Vernon Lee, he described the lady as "la châtelaine, fière des richesses
et des fiefs qu'elle a apportés à son mari.... Autour de cette châtelaine tourbillonne tout le
jour l'essaim des jeunes hommes". He continues in his own voice: "J'imagine que ce sont
des gens de cette sorte ... qui ont les premiers ... élevé jusqu'à un art savant cette humble
et inculte chanson d'amour" (1: 93-94). In another place, however, Jeanroy observes how
little we actually know about the lady: "Jamais abstraction plus creuse et plus vaine ne glaça
un poème.... Si l'on n'a pas le droit de dire que toutes les chansons émanent de la même
plume, on est vraiment tenté de croire que c'est la même femme qu'ont aimée tous les
poètes" (2: 106). For more on Vernon Lee, see below.
6 Hart demurs from Lewis's description ofadultery in courtly love and concludes that
"Lewis gives a misleading account of Provençal poetry" (1-2).
' Padene/ al., "Troubadour's Lady". Our argument was accepted by Camproux and
Dinzelbacher, and taken as a point of departure by Gaunt.
8 See also Monson's earlier rejoinder.
9 P-C 70, 43, w. 53-56, in Paden, Introduction 160; translation 539.
72William D. PadenLa corónica 32.2, 2004

I have fallen into ill favor,

and I have acted just like the fool on a bridge;
and I don't know why it happens to me,
except because I climbed too high.
For Monson diese verses "express the theme of social disparity not
directly and explicidy but indirecdy and metaphorically" (Monson and
Paden, 493). For me, however, it seems "unwise to base literal conclu-
sions on metaphorical evidence". I continued:
When Bernart laments fhat he climbed too high, I take him at
his word (which is all I have) and understand diat he hoped for
too much, for reasons which he does not care to give and I do
not care to guess. I resist translating his metaphor into a social
condition, much less generalizing that condition to the trou-
badours as a whole. (Monson and Paden, 501)
In die absence of plain evidence of any kind, I argue diat we must not
assert, as though we really knew, diat the troubadour's lady was mar-
ried and superior in rank to the troubadour.
The usual view blossomed originally in die imaginative work of
Vernon Lee, as she called herself, an English novelist and woman of
letters who published an essay called "Mediaeval Love" in 1884 (Paden,
"The Troubadour's Lady as Seen through Thick History"). For Lee
aristocratic life in the medieval South of France was focused on the
lady of the castle, a lady whom she described as "highborn, proud,
having brought her husband a dower of fiefs". The lady was surrounded
by "a whole pack of men without wives, without homes, and usually
without fortune". "Round this lady", Vernon Lee wrote, "-the stately,
proud lady perpetually described by mediaeval poets- flutters the
swarm of young men all day long, in her path; serving her at meals,
guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted even into her most
secret chamber ...." (Lee, 350-52). To Vernon Lee it was apparendy no
obstacle that she did not know the poetry of die troubadours at first
hand. She adduced as furdier evidence on twelfth-century mores in
the South of France a fifteendi-century text written in die language of
the North, the Petit Jehan de Saintré.10 Yet die powerful synthesis she
wove out of such airy materials found approval in die weighty tomes
published in 1934 by Alfred Jeanroy on the Poésie lyrique des trouba-
dours (1: 93-94).

10 For which she was criticized by Press (335).

 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetry73

Why did Jeanroy, who had edited so many of die troubadours him-
self, and who should have realized how frail was die basis for Lee's
generalizations, accept them all the same and transmit them, aug-
mented by his own imposing auüiority? I suppose, finally, because Lee
formulated a persuasive fiction - persuasive for die reasons that can
make any fiction persuasive: its appeal to the reader, based in part on
die artistry with which it is expressed. But Lee's fiction was based very
little on any connection, by way of actual evidence, to eifher historical
reality or medieval literary texts. The specificity and particularity diat
Mercedes Brea attributes to the image of die woman in Occitan po-
etry are die work of the critics, not the poets. The poets do not make
clear that die lady was always die wife of a feudal lord, or noble, or
even married. Radier, as Bédier put it, die poems themselves are "re-
ally so vague as to apply to all die situations diat life offers".
What, then, do we know about die identity of die lady in Occitan
and in Galician-Portuguese? Was she married? Was she noble? Was she
beautiful? Yes, of course she was beautiful in die eyes of die poet who
loved her (or said he did), but what more does he tell us about her
appearance or identity? And perhaps die most important question about
die lady in this poetry of love: Did she love him?
In a study of 503 Occitan poems selected for dieir relevance to
these questions, my colleagues and I found just fourteen (or 3%) in
which die beloved lady in the song appears to be married (Paden et al.,
"Troubadour's Lady" 40). One of the most striking of diese is the work
of a lady herself, the Comtessa de Dia, who wrote:
Sapchatz gran talan n'auria
qeus tengues en luoc del marit.... (P-C 46, 4, w. 21-22, in
Songs 10)
In 1975 I translated these celebrated lines as "Know that I yearn to
hold you in place of my husband" (Paden et al., "Troubadour's Lady"
40), as though to imply diat die Comtessa did indeed have a husband
whom she would have gladly cuckolded. Having diought about the
lines at greater length, however, I would now translate diem "Know
tiiat I'd want/ To hold you as my husband", implying very differendy
fhat she would like to be married to die lucky addressee, regardless
whedier she was already married or not. So the implication diat seemed
so clear turns out to be less categorical. The title "Comtessa", by the
way, does not necessarily suggest diat its holder was married to a count,
since she could have held it as the daughter of one: a Comtessa Beatrix
who must have been the eldest daughter of die Count of Die, and who
74William D. PadenLa coranica 32.2, 2004

therefore held the title by inheritance, is attested in a legal document

from 1212, and may have been die poet herself (Monier, 274-75; Paden,
Voice 231). So the Comtessa who wrote diese lines may have neither
been married nor pretended to be. The troubadours occasionally make
clear that they love unmarried women, as when Guillem de Berguedan
says diat he loved his lady "as a little girl", amey lapauca e toza.n In only
a handful of poems do we know, or think we know, diat the lady is
married.
As Brea points out (168), sometimes the Galician-Portuguese lyr-
ics make clear that the lady is married, but in others the opposite
occurs. In a satire on love Airas Engeitado begs his lady to tell her
husband not to keep diem apart.12 On die other hand, Afonso Sanchez
says in a cantiga de amor fhat he has taken a donzela as his senhorj3 Brea
reasons that a donzela or a moça was perhaps single, but that the word
molher tells us nothing specific, since it does not mean 'wife' but simply
'woman' (155-58). All these words were applied to the beloved lady in
song. Johan Airas de Santiago says diat his lady is guarded by her
modier, which seems to imply, though not necessarily, that she is un-
married (Brea, 158; cf. LP 63, 43). 14 Sometimes die poet tells us his
lady is about to be married.15 But most of the time, Brea concludes,
nothing in the context permits us to suppose one tiling or the odier.16
The situation is very similar in die two languages.
In die same study of die Occitan corpus, my colleagues and I found
evidence "that the poet's lady enjoyed high rank in the literal sense" in
six percent of the texts we examined (Paden et. al., "Troubadour's Lady"
38). Even in these songs, though, the possibility of fiction is never far
away. Peire Vidal identifies his lady as afilha. de condor, the daughter of
a nobleman just below the rank of a viscount (P-C 364, 16, v. 35, in

11P-C, p. 178, "Amies se igne ? ",v. 29, in Guillem 2: 256. Guillem adds that he loved
her even more when she was married. For further examples of the love of unmarried
women see Paden et al., "Troubadour's Lady" 42, n. 56.
12"Mays dig' a sseu marido / que non a guarde de min já": LP 1 2, 2.
13"Muytos me dizen que sservy doado / hua donzela que ey por senhor": LP 9, 7. See
also Corral Diaz, "Donzela" ; Corral Oiaz, As midieres, 227-39.
14When the figure ofthe mother occurs in cantigas de amor, it tends to create this effect.
Johan Soarez Coelho recalls that he saw his lady, apparently for the first time, with her
mother in a street, perhaps implying that she was unmarried at that time; LP 79, 1 1 .
Rodrigu'Eanes de Vasconcelos says he loves a lady who was forced by her mother to take
religious orders; LP 140, 4.
15Beltran, 29; cf. LP 50, 8 and 1 15, 7.
16Corral Diaz concludes that in the cantiga de amor, "Asenlior manifestase como unira
figura uniforme, artificial e abstracta" (As mulleres, 351 ).
 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetry75

Peire, Poesie 1: 63). Marcabru retells a conversation with thefilha d'un

senhor de castelh, the daughter of the lord of a castle (P-C 293, 1, v. 9,
in Marcabru 42). Were diese loves real, or were they figments of poetic
imagination? Some troubadours dedicate poems to countesses or other
noblewomen who may have been not their loves but their patronesses
(Scheludko). The distinction was perhaps as difficult for them to make
as it is for us.
In a larger number of poems, a quarter of those we considered,
die poet employs the metaphor of feudal subservience to express his
desire.17 For example, Bernart de Ventadorn sings:
Mas jonchas, ab col ele,
vos m'autrei em coman.
Qu'e-us pliu per bona fe
c'anc re non amei tan. (P-C 70, 36, w. 48-51; Bernart, Chan-
sons 130)

With handsjoined and neck bowed

I give myself and commend myself to you.
I pledge you in good faith
that I never loved anyone so much.
Brea finds die same feudal metaphor in Galician-Portuguese, where it
is expressed by the word senhor, feminine, which we may render in
English as the word 'lady' denoting a woman in the legal role of lord,
as in the now obsolete expression 'lady of die manor'. In another study
I have argued that this word senhor actually serves to identify the genre
that we call the cantiga d'amor better than the word amor does, and fhat
for this reason we really should call the genre die cantiga de senhor
(Paden, "Gender, die Names of Genres").
Brea shows clearly that diis language is metaphorical. Per'Eanes
Marinilo sang:
Nen quis eu dona por senhor tomar
senon vos, que amo e quero amar. (LP 119, 1)
I never wanted to take a woman as my lady
But you, whom I love and want to love.

" Paden et al., "Troubadour's Lady" 36-38. See also Mancini.

76William D. PadenLa corónica 32.2, 2004

Brea comments:

Queda clara a declaración do trobador que se entrega como

vasaio, aceptando os deberes -pero esperando tamén obte-los
dereitos- que os lazos feudais implican; el escolleu, de entre as
mulleres que conoce, unha, á que convirte en dona e señora
dos seus actos e da súa vida. Ten, pois, senhor o sentido que He
corresponde na linguaxe propia do feudalismo ... ; é decir,
implica auténtico dominio, posesión, sobre o trobador. Trátase
dunha clara traslación ... do concepto de sentidofeudal ó servicio
amoroso. (166)
Brea's word traslación is also a precise etymological rendering of die
word 'metaphor'. The feudal metaphor tells us nodiing about die ac-
tual identity, the real civil status, of the beloved lady; it only expresses
the poet's desire, using die language available at die time.
What else do we know about the lady beyond these matters of civil
status, about which we know so little? The image of die lady in Occitan
has been studied by Christiane Leube-Fey, who prefaces her analysis
of the actual texts with the frank assumption, gratuitous in my opin-
ion, diat the lady was married and of a high rank (26). She goes on to
argue diat the purpose of the canso is to praise the lady, and accord-
ingly diat the troubadour speaks of her beauty and her virtues. But
such praise does not enable us to distinguish one lady from another.18
Leube-Fey reviews the identity of the lady in a number of early trou-
badours. Guilhem IX, she says, sings die phenomenon of love rather
than a concrete woman, giving only vague indications about his lady
or ladies. Jaufre Rudel sings for love of a lady he has never seen. If he
tells us litde about her concrete identity, then, it is for good reason,
but he assures us that he loves her from afar. Bernart de Ventadorn is
more interested in the lady's effect on him than in her own identity or
appearance. The earlier troubadours, those of the twelfth and early

18 Speaking ofArnaut de Maruelh, Leube-Fey concludes that "trotz der Häufung der
Epitheta unterscheidet sich seine Dame nicht von denen seiner Vorgänger und Zeit-
genossen.... Ihr Bild bleibt ... eine Kopie des allen Trobadors gemeinsamen Ideals" (35).
Winter-Hosman prefaces her less extensive comparison of the lady in Occitan and in
French lyric poetry with the observation that "il s'agit de faire des éloges ou bien de blâmer;
elle [la description] ne vise donc pas, ou très rarement à donner une peinture objective de
personnes ou de choses" (255). She concludes interestingly that "l'image de la domna [en
occitan] est une image idéalisée, mais d'une femme en chair et en os, qui pourrait exister,
tandis que l'image de la dame [en fiançais] est l'image idéalisée d'une dame fictive, qui ne
peut pas avoir d'existence réelle" (265).
 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetry77

thirteenth centuries, occasionally depart from rhetorical stereotypes,

but those of the later thirteenth century do not. Leube-Fey's investi-
gation provides litde support for the assumption expressed by Beltran,
above, that the Occitan troubadours described physical features of
dieir ladies' appearance. She concludes (38), and one can only agree,
that wifh few exceptions realistic descriptions of the courdy lady can-
not be found in Occitan poetry.
The lady in Galician-Portuguese, too, had only occasional, scat-
tered details of realistic description.19 The most starding of these touches
is perhaps die green eyes of the lady sung by Johan Garcia de Guilhade:
Amigos, non poss' eu negar
a gran coyta que d'amor ey,
ca me vejo sandeu andar,
e con sandece o direy:
os olhos verdes que eu vi
me fazen ora andar assi. (LP 70, 9)20
Friends, I cannot deny
The great care I get from love,
For I know I act like a fool,
And foolishly I will say:
The green eyes that I saw
Now make me act this way.
The Occitan poets, according to Leube-Fey (44), never mention the
color of dieir ladies' eyes. Roi Paez de Ribela, active from the first to
the third quarter of the thirteenth century (Oliveira, 180), likened his
lady to a ruby:
Com' antr' as pedras bon roby
sodés, antre quantas eu vi. (LP 147, 12)
Like a good ruby among stones
Are you, among all [women] I have seen.

19 For detailed analysis of the terms employed in describing the lady's exterior and
interior beauty see Heur, 439-69. Heur concludes that the aesthetic of these texts "aime
l'universel et fuit le détail" (469).
-° In a cantiga de amigo by the same poet (LP 70, 40), the girl says she has green eyes.
Perhaps we can understand that she is the same woman - in the world of poetry, if not the
real world.
78William D. PadenLa corónica 32.2, 2004

Bertrán de Born had made die same comparison, and so had Aimeric
de Belenoi.21 Pai Soarez de Taveiros calls his lady "mia sennor branca e
vermelha", 'my lady white and red' (EP 97, 20, also attributed to Mar-
tin Soarez). I do not know of any Occitan troubadour who said his lady
was literally white and red, although some said it metaphorically, like
Peire Vidal, who said his lady was as white as snow and colored like a
rose."2
Leube-Fey concludes (47) diat the Occitan poets showed only the
beginnings of any attempt to make a thorough depiction of die lady's
personality. The same could be said, I believe, of the poets who wrote
in Galician-Portuguese. But the way Leube-Fey expresses this idea
strongly implies a view of progress in literary representation, a progress
which, as she puts it, barely began in these lyric forms, and which, she
seems to imply, culminated in something very much like the nineteendi-
century realist novel. I feel that it is wiser to avoid such prejudicial
judgments about progress in die history of literature or die imagina-
tion. Better simply to observe that die medieval poets do not seem
interested in providing their lady with a concrete appearance or a
distinctive individual identity. Their purpose is not realistic but rhe-
torical; rather than describing dieir lady, diey strive to praise her, or
occasionally to blame her, in order to express fheir own love persua-
sively.23 They do not make a spectacle of their lady, but of dieir desire.
But finally, did the lady love the poet? The easy answer is of course
not, since the poet laments forever that he is unloved.24 Sometimes he
expresses joy, but it is joy of anticipation - as Bédier wrote, he sings
his aspiration to love. The joi of the troubadour is not, like English
joy', "A vivid emotion of pleasure arising from a sense of well-being
or satisfaction" (Oxford English Dictionaiy). Rather it arises from the
hope of well-being or satisfaction to come. The troubadour may hope
that die lady will one day return his love, but rarely says that she has
already done so.2°
A better answer is less obvious. When the lady speaks in her own
voice she protests, echoing the man's complaints, fhat she loves him
but he does not love her. The paradox arises in the songs of die Occitan

-' P-C 80, 37, v. 25, m Bertrán, 199, and P-C 392, 26, w. 19-20, in Aimeric, 145 (also
attributed to Raimbaut de Vaqueiras); Leube-Fey, 55.
"- P-C 364, 6, VT. 56-58, in Peire, 2: 208. Leube-Fey, 57. Videira Lopes takes branca e
vermelha as referring to cosmetics (42).
-3 On praise and blame as constitutive elements in the Occitan genres, see Dagenais.
"* Akehurst, 138. Beltran, 38-39; Tavani, 123-32.
"5Akehurst, 144; Bee, 561.
 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetiy79
trobairitz, or women troubadours, about forty songs by about twenty
women whose names we know and ofhers who are anonymous.26 It is
confirmed in Galician-Portuguese by the cantigas de amigo, songs writ-
ten by men but representing female characters, in which the lady com-
plains diat her friend does not reciprocate her desire, in a symmetrical
relation widi the cantigas de amor (better called cantigas de senhor) in
which die man complains that his lady doesn't reciprocate his.27 The
fact diat the cantigas de amigo were written by men, the same men who
wrote the cantigas de senhor, suggests that the poets were not unduly
troubled by the paradox in their depiction of ardent desire rebuffed
on both sides.
How can we understand this paradox? By understanding, in die
first place, diat these songs are not direct representations of real situ-
ations and feelings, but art, and fhat like ofher forms of art they have
their own internal logic. In the second place, we must understand that
their internal logic tends toward expression of sadness or despair in
love. With rare exceptions diese songs are not comic but tragic, in a
large, non-Aristotelian but Dantean sense; the story ends unhappily,
as in many operas. In dieir emotional tone die Occitan canso and die
Galician-Portuguese cantiga de senhor are like die American blues or
die Portuguesefado. They are usually forlorn, mournful, haunting, or
plaintive. Therefore, and since they (all cansos and cantigas de senhor,
many blues and fados) are love songs, both men and women tend to
sing of dieir sorrows in love. These songs have litde to do with anyone's
civil status or objective identity. They console us in our own grief by
making the sadness of imaginary others into something beautiful.
I do not dunk diat the lady in Galician-Portuguese poetry is very
different from the lady in Occitan. Bodi are the object of die poet's
yearning, of the love that animates his song, just as it animates hers
when she sings in return. With a few exceptions that are striking be-
cause diey are so unusual, neither in Galician-Portuguese nor in Occitan
do die poets provide us widi details about the physical features of the
lady; nor do diey specify her civil status. But the very non-representa-
tional, non-mimetic nature of diese songs has implications, I diink, for
the way we should think about them.

26 "In general, the women poets do not respond directly to the male poets' request
for love, initiating their own, parallel requests instead" (Songs xx).
"' "Acoita, os crûmes, a desilusión, a separación, a infidelidade ... son motivos comúns
coas cantigas de amor ... pero ñas de amigo están vistos dende a perspectiva feminina" (Brea
and Lorenzo Gradin, 81).
80William D. PadenLa corónica 32.2, 2004

Since the lady is demonstrably married in only a small minority of

cases, and since she is always die poet's beloved, it seems to me inher-
ently plausible that the beloved lady might have been free, in many or
most cases -though not necessarily- of the hindrance of a husband. It
is die poet's yearning diat puts the lady in her position of dominance
relative to him. Therefore she might in many cases -diough not nec-
essarily- have been a young, unmarried woman. For all the poet cares,
she is simply his love. This is why, I would argue, she is sometimes
specifically young. She is specifically old only in an altogether differ-
ent register, the satires of aging prostitutes.28
If it should be objected, as many scholars have argued, that medi-
eval women had no choice but marriage, die convent, or prostitution,
one may answer that every woman who ever married was once not
married. The existence of young, unmarried women in the Middle
Ages has long been obscured by scholars seemingly driven by die con-
viction diat women really matter only in relation to men. But young
medieval women are beginning to have dieir day.29 For too long we
have been blind to the entire population of women who were not mar-
ried yet. This population would have been equal to the eventual popu-
lation of all women within their age cohort, if diey all would eventually
marry. But it must have been even greater, since some women never
married. In any case, women who were marriageable cannot have been
entirely absent from the medieval scene; if they had been, marriage
would have been impossible.30 I see no reason to exclude them from
the imaginary world of song. Rather I diink song may have gravitated
around them. To make this assumption about die implicit conditions
of medieval song strikes me as being far more reasonable than it is to
assume, on evidence too slight to bear the weight of substantial con-
clusions, that the troubadour's lady was always married.
The Occitan troubadours do not say that their songs were dedi-
cated to the love of married women. Only the critics do, or rather
some critics, because they have imbibed a doctrine formulated under
rather bizarre circumstances in the late nineteenth century, a doctrine
with litde relation to historical or literary evidence. In contrast, stu-

-8 For references on the motifofyoung women versus old in Occitan and Latin poetry,
see Paden, "Gender in the World" 58-59, n. 43, and Gouiran, "Cycle"; iorvelha, 'old' in
cantigas de escarnho, Corral Díaz, "A figura da velha" .
29See Kline; Ward; Young Medieval Women.
30Contrary to the assumption made by Lee, in whose view young men in the castle
had "no young women oftheir own age with whom to associate, and absolutely no unmar-
ried girls who could be a desirable match" (352).
 The Beloved Lady in Medieval Poetry81

dents of Galician-Portuguese should be congratulated for basing dieir

conclusions on study of the actual texts. If die texts provide few par-
ticulars about the lady's identity, we must refrain from leaping to un-
warranted conclusions. By extending the same methods into our
reading of the Occitan troubadours, we find fhat die ladies in the two
bodies of poetry are really very much alike. On the basis ofthat obser-
vation, we can begin to read.

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