Diminishing the Trobairitz , Excluding the Women Trouvères

Joan Tasker Grimbert

Tenso, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1999, pp. 23-38 (Article)

Published by Société Guilhem IX

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ten.1999.0011

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/432186/summary

Access provided at 12 Jan 2020 23:30 GMT from the University of Connecticut
 Diminishing the Trobairitz,
Excluding the Women Trouvères

In 1 979 appeared an article that has attained seminal status among

trobairitz scholars: Pierre Bee's "'Trobairitz' et chansons de femme.
Contribution à la connaissance du lyrisme féminin au moyen âge." It was
written largely in reaction to Meg Bogin's pioneering book on the women
troubadours,1 for Bee reproved Bogin's "philogynie primesautière" and
believedjustifiably that there was room, between the rhapsodic admira-
tion ofsome critics and the harsh misogyny ofothers, for a more rigorous
and systematic study (235). Perceived at the time as an important contri-
bution to the understanding of the poetics of the women troubadours,
Bee's study continues to exercise considerable influence: Occitanists rou-
tinely cite it for its main thesis that the trobairitz adapted the système
socio-poétique of their male counterparts by drawing on themes charac-
teristic of the chansons defemme.2 If Bee's contribution to trobairitz
studies has generally seemed solid, it is no doubt because his adeptness at
structural analysis is legendary, and his analytical skills convey a sense of
objectivity that inspires confidence. I believe, however, that this confi-
dence is not always justified, and the purpose of the present study is to
demonstrate how, in Bee's celebrated 1979 article, his systematic, clev-
erly-wrought arguments conceal a bias that has unfairly oriented how schol-
ars assess the contribution of women to medieval poetry.

The key to Bee's orientation is clear from the outset in his arrest-
ing formulation ofwhat he calls two apparent paradoxes: " 1 ) des femmes
(les trobairitz) ont écrit des chansons troubadouresques, c'est-à-dire en
conformité avec un système lyrique à dominance masculine; et des hommes
ont écrit des 'chansons de femme'; 2) dans le cadre de la seule lyrique
gallo-romane, on a curieusement: du côté occitan, des trobairitz, mais
pas (ou presque) de 'chansons de femme', et du côté français, un certain
nombre de 'chansons de femme', mais pas de trobairitz [= women
trouvères]" (236). If Occitanists have not been troubled by this striking
assertion, it may be that they care more about Bee's willingness to admit
23
JOANTASKER GRIMBERT

women troubadours to the pantheon ofmedieval poets than his determi-

nation to exclude women trouvères. For scholars who are already well-
disposed to Bee, the appearance ofhis 1995 anthology, Chants d'amour
desfemmes-troubadours. Trobairitz et "chansons defemme, " featur-
ing a long introduction which owes a large, acknowledged debt to recent
work done by Occitanists (especially Angelica Rieger and Katharina
Städtler) can only reinforce the impulse to see him as an ally. But those
who are tempted to do so, I would suggest, fail to appreciate the rhetori-
cal strategies used by Bee throughout his 1979 article to diminish the
contribution of the trobairitz, particularly the tissue oferroneous state-
ments woven together in the fourth part of the article to document the
assertion that the chansons defemme on which the trobairitz' originality
supposedly depends were all male-authored. This claim and the faulty
arguments that underpin it may have raised no eyebrows in 1979, but
recent scholarship, particularly by feminists, has made us more sensitive
readers.

Bee's contention that there were no women trouvères was chal-

lenged by Madeleine Tyssens in 1992 and, more recently, by Eglal Doss-
Quinby and Wendy Pfeffer. As early as 1986, Coldwell had devoted a
section ofher study on secular musicians in medieval France to the women
trouvères and published the music to three songs and ajeu-parti (50-
54).3 The cause of the women trouvères has also been taken up by Will-
iam D. Paden, who has actually called for a critical edition of all extant
texts and music ( 1 17, n. 24). Although the question raised by these schol-
ars, the authorship of the chansons defemme, may once have seemed
peripheral to trobairitz studies, it should not seem so in light of current
studies. Under these circumstances and given the publication of Bee's
1995 anthology—which, as the subtitle suggests, reprises in its introduc-
tion large segments ofthe 1 979 article— this may be an opportune time to
reconsider the value ofthe earlier study and to examine the corresponding
portions of the introduction to the 1995 anthology.4
In work focused specifically on the trobairitz, two feminist schol-
ars, Kathryn Gravdal and Simon Gaunt, have explicitly questioned Bee's
objectivity. Gravdal's article, "Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Medieval
24
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

Women Trobairitz," is of particular interest in that it both presents a

feminist's complex reaction to Bee's main thesis and, in view ofthe points
Gravdal accepts and rejects, underscores the importance ofrevisiting the
1979 article:

For Bee, the fact that the women drew on a male literary
tradition for their female persona appears to reduce his
estimation of the writerly contribution of the trobairitz
and to prove that their work is but a pastiche of poetic
clichés drawn willy nilly from images ofwomen through-
out the medieval lyric, thus closing the question ofthe
female signature.
I would argue on the contrary that the women's
typological choice ofthe feminine lyric voice from chan-
sons defemme is a deliberate strategy. (Bruckner 1992,
857-76) The fact that the character comes from a male-
authored genre (what genres from which the trobairitz
could choose were not male-authored?) does not lessen
the shrewdness of the choice (114).

Unlike most scholars who cite Bee's article, Gravdal recognizes how Bee's
insistence that the chansons defemme were male-authored has a nega-
tive impact on his assessment ofthe trobairitz. She also understands that
he closes "the question ofthe female signature" and excludes the women
trouvères. However, she does not challenge his statements about the
women trouvères. Concerned only with the trobairitz, she tries merely to
present their strategy in a positive light. Unfortunately, in lauding the
"shrewdness of [their] choice," she actually reinforces Bee's contention
that there were no women trouvères.

Simon Gaunt's critique in Genderand Genre in Medieval French

Literature scrutinizes an oft-cited distinction that Bee introduces at the
beginning of his article. As noted, Bee promises at the outset "une étude
plus ponctuelle, plus rigoureuse, plus systématique" (235) than Bogin's.
In 1979, the studied objectivity of his approach must have seemed en-
25
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT

hanced by his insistence on the need, when speaking of texts, to distin-

guish between 'féminité génétique (avec un auteur dont on sait
pertinemment qu'il est une femme)" and "féminité textuelle, à savoir une
pièce, dans la très grande majorité des cas amoureuse, et dont le 'je'
lyrique est une femme (l'auteur pouvant être assez fréquemment un
homme)" (235-36). But as Gaunt observes, this apparently useful distinc-
tion has been exploited by some scholars to deny the existence of a genu-
ine female voice in the trobairitz corpus:

Huchet and Bee's articles on the trobairitz highlight a

serious theoretical problem for the reader of the corpus,
but in some ways (unintentionally, one must assume) they
offer a more sophisticated basis for denying that the songs
attributed to the trobairitz were written by women. The
implication oftheir approach is that it is irrelevant whether
the songs were written by women or not because the first-
person position the female voices occupy is constructed
by the dominant discourse ( 160).5
Gaunt offers an excellent insight into the effect ofusing this distinction, but
that effect hardly seems unintentional in Bee's case. In his 1 995 anthology
Bee responds to Huchet's claim that "à l'intérieur du texte, il n'est d'autre
féminité que celle inscrite par la langue poétique" (73) by asserting that "le
texte lui-même implique un hors-texte qui le soutienne et le dynamise,
sinon un corps réel dans une réalité historique précise, du moins un en-
semble de présupposés socioculturels et de connivences collectives qui
rendent ce texte parlant" (24, n. 1 ). If this statement is an objection, it is
couched in such opaque terms that it too seems to rob the trobairitz of
any historical reality.

Bee himselfexploits theféminité génétique/féminité textuelle

distinction in his studies on Occitan and Old French lyric poetry6 in a way
that seems calculated to diminish the contribution ofmedieval women poets
both in Occitania and in northern France. Indeed, in his 1979 article he
will remind us frequently ofthe remarkably small numberofOccitan cansos

26
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

whose author is clearly known to be a woman (féminité génétique),

while putting great emphasis on the male authorship of the chansons de
femme (féminité textuelle). Moreover, as we shall see, in his 1995 an-
thology, Bee covers these points (féminité génétique/féminité textuelle
and male authorship of the chansons defemme) in essentially the same
terms (48-49). Yet even as he stubbornly continues to deny women a role
in the composition of the chansons defemme, he graciously allows that
"la femme (beaucoup plus que l'homme) a dû jouer un rôle important
dans la conservation et la propagation de cette lyrique popularisante où
elle demeure le personnage essentiel, autour duquel le texte s'articule"
(49).

The section devoted to the cfiansons defemme in Bec 's article is

actually the last stage in a systematic analysis ofthe poetics ofthe women
troubadours. In the first three sections of his article, Bee focuses on the
trobairitz, stressing time and again the minimal size ofthat corpus. He
opens his discussion of the trobairitz by saying: "Le corpus des pièces
des trobairitz est, on le sait, très modeste" (236). The second paragraph
begins: "C'est fort peu de chose on le voit" and ends: "Quoi qu'il en soit,
le corpus est effectivement minime et, lorsqu'on veut tenter une analyse un
peu fine, il faut faire feu de tout bois" (236). Of course, he was dealing in
1979 with Bogin's corpus of twenty-three poems and eighteen names,
and since Rieger was able to compile a larger corpus (forty-six pieces and
twenty names), Bee puts somewhat less emphasis on this point in his 1995
anthology: he seems content to observe that the corpus is "assez élastique"
(20).

Bec also strives in the three earlier sections to depreciate the

trobairitz' originality. He is pleased to belittle the quality of their accom-
plishment by underscoring incessantly the dominance of male poets in a
poetic system used by both men and women rather than seeing the women
as equal partners in the creation and development ofthat system. For
example, he identifies as spécificités négatives every characteristic of
the male corpus that is absent in the trobairitz corpus. Bee would no
doubt argue that the use of the term spécificité négative is justified in a

27
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT

Greimasian context, but since his analysis is not explicitly structuralist, the
term is out ofplace and needlessly denigrating. He may have come to the
same realization when he opted in his anthology to replace it by spécificité
(or trait) par défaut (22), a curious expression that is hardly more posi-
tive. Another spécificité négative noted in 1979 was that the trobairitz
had not composed any sirventes orplanhs, a statement that he was forced
to modify in 1995 when working with Rieger's larger corpus of songs.
Bee's concept of trobairitz poetics has, however, remained unchanged:
he portrays the women as working to insert themselves into a socio-po-
etic system dominated by the male troubadours and exploiting themes
(especially the malmariée) found in the chansons defemme, which he
claims—and as he will attempt to prove in the fourth and final section of
his article—were all authored by men.
Bee's claim that the trobairitz drew on themes found in the chan-
sons defemme would not seem troubling, or at least suspect, were it not
for his dogged insistence on male authorship ofthese songs, despite evi-
dence to the contrary. He refuses to consider seriously female authorship
of any of these songs, even though most ofthem are anonymous and, as
Bee admits more than once in this section—boldly entitled "Les 'chan-
sons de femme' à auteur masculin"—could conceivably have been com-
posed by either sex. After discussing a number of chansons defemme or
d'ami in various Romance languages (the majority by men, admittedly,
but some by women), he ends with a few examples in French, and it is
here that his determination to exclude women from the corpus is most
flagrant. He begins by citing Lafroidor ne lajalee (RS 5 1 7)7 which he
characterizes as "la belle 'chanson de femme' anonyme." This song, though
indeed anonymous, is attributed in the manuscript (C 136) to "une dame,"
but Bee does not convey this interesting bit of information; after repro-
ducing the first strophe, he repeats: "La pièce est malheureusement
anonyme," adding: "Mais comment dire si son auteur est un homme ou
une femme?" (258). The second song Bec mentions is also anonymous,
Ifierusalem, grant damage mefais (RS 191); again he asks: "Son auteur
est-il un homme ou une femme?" (258). The uncertainty feigned by Bec in
these two rhetorical questions is unquestionably a pose designed to un-
28
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

derscore the "androgynous" nature of the genesis ofa lyric type that is a
clear example oíféminité textuelle, for he leaves no doubt that he be-
lieves the author of each of these chansons was male. As we remember,
he had stated at the beginning of his article that there were no women
poets in the North, and his belief is restated in the title he chooses for this
section of his study. Moreover, he ends his discussion by citing three clian-
sons defemme "dont les auteurs, cette fois-ci, sont connus pour être des
hommes" (258): Chanterai por mon corage (RS 1287), attributed to
Guiot de Dijon, Onques ? 'amai tant quejoufui amee (RS 21 ), attrib-
uted to Richard de Fournival, and Amors méfait renvoisier et chanter
(RS 498), attributed to Moniot d'Arras. He does not bother to specify
that the first two attributions have been questioned by some scholars (in-
cluding himself),8 nor does he see fit to mention that a few women's songs
bear rubrics ascribing them to women.
For, contrary to what Bee would have us believe, there are a few
chansons that are attributed to named women in at least some manu-
scripts, as Madeleine Tyssens has recently reminded us: Mout m 'abelist
quantje voi revenir (RS 145), ascribed to Maroie de Diergnau in both
manuscripts that preserve it (M and T); Un petit devant lejor (RS 1995),
ascribed to the Duchesse de Lorraine in C 247, though ascribed to men in
two other manuscripts and anonymous in five more; and Par maintes
fois aurai estei requise (RS 1 640), ascribed to the Duchesse de Lorraine
in C 1 82, anonymous in U 91.9 Although Tyssens' article appeared too
late to inform Bee's 1979 article, Bee certainly knew about these attribu-
tions, because earlier scholars such as Jeanroy (96) had noted them and
had been quick to marshal arguments to reject them as fanciful. There is
no disputing Bee's right to accept these arguments, but his failure to men-
tion the attributions is troubling. This failure is compounded when one
sees that by the time ofhis 1995 anthology he knew ofTyssens' article (it
is cited in his bibliography) but made no reference to it in his introduction
and thus no attempt to respond to Tyssens' challenge.
Bee's determination to erase all traces of the women trouvères
from Old French poetry can be seen as well in his analysis of the Old

29
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT

French medieval lyric, and specifically the chanson defemme, in the first
volume of La Lyriquefrançaise au moyen âge (XIIe-XIIIe), which ap-
peared two years before his article on the trobairitz. Although he pub-
lished a number ofexamples of this lyric type in the anthology volume
("Textes") of this work, he records not a single woman author, even in
cases where there exist manuscript attributions to women. If at least one
ofthe manuscripts containing a particular song attributes it to a male poet,
he adopts that attribution. More disturbing still, he does not even mention
cases ofcontradictory manuscript attributions, unlike Samuel Rosenberg,
who in his 1981, 1995, and 1998 anthologies preserves the feminine attri-
bution of some ofthe love lyrics and debate poems and duly notes cases
ofconflicting attribution.

The last subject broached by Bee in the fourth section of his

trobairitz article is the existence within the trobairitz corpus of eleven
tensos—nine between a man and a woman, he specifies, and "only two"
between two women. The tenso aristocratisante of the troubadours
belongs to a more general type, the debate poem, and Bee notes that the
conflict or contrast is naturally heightened when both sexes are given voice.
The implication is that the tensos in which the women appear were authored
by men who used the female voice for contrast. To support his unstated
belief, Bee goes on to note analogies in other languages, including Galician-
Portuguese, where all the tensos "—il n'y a pas de doute—" were written
by men (260). He dutifully records the existence of similar pieces in Old
French but mentions only the anonymous ones transcribed by Jeanroy
before concluding: "Toutes ces tensons—un peu marginales il est vrai—
ont visiblement été écrites par des hommes" (261 ; my emphasis). This
statement, like so many in this section, is hardly an argument, and Bee
clearly believes that his authority is sufficient to convince us. In reality,
although the majority ofthe Old Frenchjeux-partis are attributed to male
poets, there are thirteen in which women play an active role as partici-
pants (usually against male poets, but in three instances against each other)
and fifteen more in which they are named asjudges. It is entirely possible
that many of the women composed their own parts, as some manuscript
attributions indicate.10

30
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

In the second of two "notes additionnelles" appended to his ar-

ticle, Bee claims that after completing his study he became aware of"une
dizaine de tensons homme/femme, toutes attribuées à des hommes, mais
sans qu'on aitjamais songé à lier automatiquement la 'voix' féminine à la
créativité d'une femme réelle, co-auteur de la pièce. Cela nous confirme
dans notre suspicion relative à la réalité du personnage féminin de certaines
tensons mixtes" (262). It is not clear whether the poems to which Bee is
referring are in Occitan or in French, but in either case he would not be
inclined to consider women as authors of the feminine voice. In his 1995
anthology, Bee devotes a whole section of his introduction to the Occitan
tensos in which women participate (43-46). However, he excludes them
from his published corpus—entitled Chants d'amour desfemmes-trou-
badours—on the grounds that they are not technically "chants d'amour"
(although love is clearly the main subject) and also because he believes
that the women's parts were invented by the male troubadours.

The last example ofadebate poem that Bee mentions in his 1979
article is relegated to a footnote: two cablas exchanged between the woman
poet Na Tecla de Borja and the Catalan poet Auziàs March." It is curi-
ous indeed that although Bee seems willing to admit that women com-
posed poetry in Occitania and Catalonia, he refuses to consider (or even
mention) the evidence we have that there were women trouvères in France.
Truly, nulle ? 'est poète dans son propre pays !

We might well ask what purpose this fourth section on the "chan-
sons de femme à auteur masculin" serves in an article devoted to the
trobairitz, just as we might wonder what purpose Bee's remarks on the
debate poems serve in a section supposedly devoted to the chansons de
femme. Surely, we cannot fail to see now that it is the final stage in Bee's
effort to debase the trobairitz. Since one of Bee's main theses is that the
trobairitz adapted the troubadour system by exploiting material from the
chansons defemme, and since there exist very few extant Occitan chan-
sons defemme, he is obliged to touch on the larger corpus of women's
songs in Old French, which gives him the opportunity to assert that they
were all male-authored. Moreover, by excluding women in the North from
31
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT

the pantheon of medieval poets, he is able to depreciate still further the

contribution of women in the South.

This same strategy is evident in the 1 995 anthology where Bee,

after asserting that chansons defemme are most often anonymous but
can also be the work of male troubadours, attempts tojustify his decision
to include a few of these songs in a collection devoted to "femmes-trou-
badours clairement reconnues comme telles" (48). It is, he explains, be-
cause it is important to distinguish betweenféminitégénétique andféminité
textuelle, and he adds: "Or il se trouve que la situation textuelle de la
chanson courtoise écrite par une trobairitz est par bien des points la
même que celle des chansons defemme: à savoir un 'je' lyrique féminin
(inversant par là la situation classique de la canso troubadouresque)
chantant (ou déplorant) son amour pour un ami" (49). Here we have the
confirmation that Bee still holds fast to his conviction that there were no
women trouvères and uses this belief to diminish the trobairitz. Indeed, if
we accept Gaunt's criticism of theféminité génétique/féminité textuelle
distinction, it would appear that Bee cannot help undermining the exist-
ence ofthe trobairitz, even while he is cashing in on the renewed interest
in them.

In conclusion: we recall that Bee had stated at the beginning of his

article his determination to inject a large dose of objectivity into the dis-
cussion of the trobairitz by offering "une étude plus ponctuelle, plus
rigoureuse, plus systématique" (235), but as we have seen, his rhetoric
belies the desire, conscious or unconscious, to diminish the women trou-
badours. If further proof of Bee's hidden agenda is needed, it can be seen
at the end of his article when he returns to the trobairitz and formulates
his conclusions concerning their contribution to Occitan poetry. After re-
stating his thesis that the féminitéobserved by Bogin in the poems of the
trobairitz is a function ofthe dialectic between two registers—the registre
aristocratisant (specifically, the troubadour canso) and the registre
popularisant (especially the chanson defemme)— he concedes that the
access women gained to the closed world of the trobar is already an
indication of acertain liberation. But he cannot refrain from issuing a final

32
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

salvo. In an apparently gracious gesture he determines to give Bogin the

last word, but at what price we can only appreciate by examining his
closing assertion: "C'est dans ce sens, mais dans ce sens uniquement, que
l'on peut dire sans doute, avec Meg Bogin, que les trobairitz occitanes
nous offrent le premier témoignage—encore que balbutiant et contin-
gent à notre sens—'d'une culture que nous n'avions approchéejusqu'ici
qu'au travers des hommes'" (262; my emphasis). In this final sentence, he
has found occasion to remind us yet again of the limited nature of the
corpus, and his characterization of that corpus as testimony that is
"balbutiant et contingent" could hardly be more deprecating.12
Joan Tasker Grimbert
Catholic University ofAmerica

NOTES

]Les Femmes Troubadours (197'8), the French translation of Bogin's

book, had just appeared.

2 Numerous studies published in the past ten years bear witness to this
influence. Bruckner's recent work on the trobairitz contains multiple ref-
erences to it. In "Fictions of the Female Voice," she refers to it as "an
important article" (872); she cites it repeatedly in her edition ofthe trobairitz
and in her entry in A Handbook ofthe Troubadours. See also Blakeslee,
Earnshaw, Gaunt (Gender and Genre), Gravdal, Kay (who cites Bee's
article in a footnote listing the major trobairitz articles; 239, n. 45), and
Nappholz. Gaunt and Gravdal both have reservations regarding Bee's
ideas (see below) but do not treat the specific subject—the authorship of
the chansons defemme—discussed in the present article.
3Coldwell knew Bee's article, since she cites it in reference to the trans-
formation that the trobairitz wrought within the troubadouresque tradition
(n. 55). Curiously, though, she passes over Bee's assertion that there were
33
JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT

no women trouvères! This is symptomatic of the way Bee's article has

been perceived by many scholars.
4At the beginning of his introduction, Bee himself calls for a mise-au-
point. Noting that although much work has been done on the trobairitz in
the past two decades in the United States and Germany, little has been
published in French since the French translation of Bogin's book: "Le
moment était donc venu, profitant des derniers travaux sur la matière,
notamment les deux thèses allemandes d' Angelica Rieger et de Katharina
Städtler et dans l'attente d'études à venir, de tenter à la fois de faire le
point sur la question et de présenter au médiéviste, et surtout au 'lecteur
moyen,' une synthèse suffisamment éclairante qui puisse leur permettre de
pénétrer dans le monde somme toute assez clos du grand chant
troubadouresque et, plus spécialement, de sa face féminine" (7).

5 "Jean-Charles Huchet, for instance, suggests that the trobairitz are a

fiction littéraire, while Bec parallels this by insisting that we are dealing
less with authentic women poets than with what he calls textualité
féminine" (159).

6 In my analysis below I will have occasion to cite his two-volume study/

anthology, La Lyriquefrançaise au moyen âge (XIIe - XIIIe siècles).
7 All Old French lyrics are designated by the numbers assigned to them in
Spanke 1955.

8 Just a year before this article was published, Bee himself had found the
attribution to Richard de Fournival questionable: in his 1978 anthology of
Old French lyrics, he had noted the author as "(Richard de Fournival ?),"
both on the page containing the lyric and in the index. Rosenberg appears
to accept all three of these attributions, but notes that the crusade song
"cannot be attributed with certainty to Guiot de Dijon, who is not known
to have composed any other songs touching on a crusade or voicing the
sentiments of a woman" (Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères,

34
 DIMINISHING THE TROBAIRITZ

289). In a recent book, Michel Zink follows Bee's lead and attributes this
song to Guiot de Dijon ( 143, 147).

9 Although Tyssens accepts the attribution of RS 1640, she rejects it for

RS 1995 on the grounds that it gives voice in the frame to a male narrator
(380). No doubt for the same reason (and because she has resolved to
limit herself to examples offéminité textuelle), she does not mention the
prayer to the Virgin, Amours, u trop tart me suipris (RS 1 604a) attrib-
uted to "Li ro'i'ne Blance" (Blanche de Castile). However, if men were
able to create fictive women, there is no reason to doubt that women
were capable ofcreating fictive men.

10See Tyssens (382-84) and Doss-Quinby. The threejeux-partis in which

women debate against each other are RS 1112 (Dame de la Chaucie &
Sainte des Prez), RS 1744 (Dame Margot & Dame Maroie [Marote]),
and RS 1962 (Lorete & Suer). On the lack of objectivity shown by crit-
ics when assessing the status of anonymous voices (real vs. fictional) in
Occitan male/female debate poems, see Gaunt ("Sexual Difference," 302)
andNappholz(7-8).

11Published by Massó i Torrents, who devotes a section of his article to

Na Tecla de Borja (411-14); cited in Bee's article (26 1 , n. 94).

12Cf. Blakeslee's much more upbeat conclusion assessing the trobairitz'

accomplishment in an article that details a theory remarkably similar to
Bee's (75).

WORKS CITED

Bee, Pierre. Chants d'amour des femmes-troubadours. Trobairitz et

"chansons defemme. " Paris: Stock, 1995.
_____. La Lyriquefrançaise au moyen âge (XIIe - XIIIe siècles). 2
vol. Paris: Picard, 1977-78.

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JOANTASKER GRIMBERT

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