Consistori del Gay Saber

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An initial from the first page of the Leys d'amor
An initial from the first page of the Leys d'amor

The Consistori del Gay (or Gai) Saber ("Consistory of the Gay Science"),[1] commonly called the Consistori de Tolosa ("Consistory of Toulouse") today, was a poetic academy founded at Toulouse in 1323 to revive and perpetuate the lyric school of the troubadours.

Contents

[edit] Foundation

The Consistori was founded by seven literary men of the bourgeoisie, who composed a manifesto, in Occitan verse, pledging to award prizes to poetry in the troubadouresque style and emulating the language of classical period of the troubadours (roughly 1160–1220). The academy was originally called the Consistori dels Sept Trobadors ("Consistory of the Seven Troubadours") or Sobregaya Companhia dels Set (VII) Trobadors de Tolosa ("Overjoyed Company of the seven troubadours of Toulouse"). In its efforts to promote an extinct literary koine over the evolving dialects of the fourteenth century, the Consistori went a long way to preserving the troubadours' memory for posterity as well as bequeathing to later scholarship an encyclopaedic terminology for the analysis and historiography of Occitan lyric poetry. Chaytor believed that the Consistori "arose out of informal meetings of poets held in earlier years".[2]

The Consistori was governed by a chancellor and seven judges or mantenedors (maintainers).[3] In 1390 John I of Aragon, one of the earliest Renaissance humanists to sit on a European throne, established the Consistori de Barcelona in imitation of the Toulousain academy.[4][5]

[edit] Activities

The Consistori held an annual poetry contest at which one contestant would receive the violeta d'aur, golden violet, for the poem judged the best. The second prize was a silver wild rose, and the other prizes, awarded for particular poetic forms, were similarly floral, leading later scholars to label the competitions the Jocs Florals. The first prize was rewarded on 3 May 1324 to Arnaut Vidal de Castelnou d'Ari for a sirventes in praise of the Virgin Mary. The contests were held intermittently until 1484, when the last prize was awarded to Arnaut Bernart de Tarascon. From this period of 160 years survive the record of around a hundred prizes.

It was in order to judge these contests that the Consistori first commissioned an Occitan grammar, including the laws of poetry, be written up. The first compiler was Guilhem Molinier, whose Leys d'amor was completed between 1328 and 1337. It went through two subsequent redactions. Several other grammatical treatises and glosses were produced by poets associated with the Consistori.

By 1471 the Consistori was losing its Occitan character. It awarded the golden violet to Peire de Janilhac n'ostan qu'el fos Frances, per so que dictec el lengatge de Tholosa: notwithstanding that he was French, because he composed in the language of Toulouse.[6] In 1513 the Consistori was transformed into the Collège de rhétorique et de poésie françaises: the College of French Rhetoric and Poetry. In 1554 the College awarded a silver eglantine rose to none other than Pierre de Ronsard, the greatest French poet of his generation, for his Amours. During the Enlightenment, Fabre d'Églantine received his name from the dog rose the academy bestowed on him at the jeux floraux (floral games). In 1694 the Consistori was reborn as the Académie des Jeux Floraux, founded by Louix XIV. It still exists today.

[edit] Character and legacy

The Consistori, in its reactionary attempt to preserve what had gone out of style, is often credited with fostering a monotonous form of poetry devoid of vibrance and feeling.[7] Partly, however, this can be blamed on the Inquisition and the fear of being labelled immoral or, worse, a heretic. Courtly love, with all its adulterous and extramarital connotations, was a rarer theme with troubadours associated with Toulouse than religious themes, especially Marian. Even on religious themes, however, their work lacks the "force" of the last troubadours of the thirteenth century, like Cerverí de Girona, who wrote much on such themes.[8] The Toulousains lacked originality and for that reason their accomplishments have been undervalued by later generations. Their isolation and their classicism cut them off from the literary movements giving life to other vernaculars, such as the dolce stil novo and the Renaissance in Italian and the work of Ausias March in Catalan.

Martín de Riquer is highly criticial of the escola poètica de Tolosa, which he charges with a thematically severely limited, weighed down by a narrow conception of art and imposing strictures governing poetic form and content, negatively influencing Catalan poetry by exporting occitanisms (until Italian trends wafted over the western Mediterranean sea routes to rejuvenate it), and sustaining an outmoded literary language. He compares it to French neoclassicism and its "tyranny of the monotonous alexandrine".[9]

[edit] Associated troubadours

[edit] Bibliography

  • Boase, Roger (1977). The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0 87471 950 x.
  • Chaytor, Henry John (1933). A History of Aragon and Catalonia. London: Methuen Publishing.
  • Fraser, Veronica (1993). "The Influence of the Venerable Bede on the Fourteenth-Century Occitan Treatise Las Leys d'Amors." Rhetorica, 11:1 (Winter) pp. 51–61.
  • Paden, William D. (1995). "The Troubadours and the Albigensian Crusade: A Long View." Romance Philology, 49:2 (Nov.), pp. 168–91.
  • Riquer, Martí de (1964). Història de la Literatura Catalana, vol. 1. Barcelona: Edicions Ariel.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Consistori de la Gaya Sciensa is a possible Occitan version, Consistòri is a modern spelling; French: La Compagnie des mainteneurs du Gai Savoir, Compagnie Tres-Gaie des Sept Troubadours de Toulouse, Consistoire du Gai Savoir, Consistoire de la Gaie Science; Catalan: Consistori de la Gaya Sciència, Consistori de la Gaia Ciència; Spanish: Consistorio del Gay Saber, Consistorio de la Gaya Ciencia.
  2. ^ Chaytor, 198.
  3. ^ Fraser, p. 52, who seems also to distinguish between the Sobregaya Companhia of seven troubadours and an apparently pre-existing Consistori del Gay Saber. Chaytor, 198, does likewise, making the Consistori the commitee which appointed the chancellor and maintainers.
  4. ^ Boase, pp. 6–7.
  5. ^ Riquer, p. 565.
  6. ^ Paden, 183.
  7. ^ Riquer makes this criticism, p. 523.
  8. ^ Cerverí has un to i una força (a tone and force) that the Toulousains lack (Riquer, p. 523).
  9. ^ "tiranitzar pels monòtons alexandrins" (Riquer, 532).
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