Razo

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A razó or razo was a short piece of Occitan prose explaining the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A razo often introduced a particular poem, in which case it acted as a short incipit. On the other hand, the razo could have characteristics of a vida (a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and the boundary between the two genres was never concrete.

i love razo. The word razó means "reason" in Occitan. In the chansonniers, the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, some poems are accompanied by a prose explanation whose purpose is to give the reason why the poem was composed. These texts are occasionally based on independent sources. To that extent they supplement the vidas (biographies) in the same manuscripts and are useful to modern literary and historical researchers. Often, however, it is clear that assertions in the razós are simply deduced from literal readings of details in the poems. Most of the surviving razó corpus is the work of Uc de Saint Circ, composed in Italy between 1227 and 1230.

A razo often introduced a particular poem, in which case it acted as a short incipit. On the other hand, the razo could have characteristics of a vida (a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and the boundary between the two genres was never concrete.

There is a complete collection of razós, with French translation and commentary, by Boutière and Schutz.

Biographical explications of poems are not unknown in other literatures. For a Latin example contemporary with the earliest razós see Linquo coax ranis. In a manuscript from Bergamo there is an explanatory Latin rubric preceding the Occitan partimen Si paradis et enfernz son aital by Girard Cavalaz and Aycart del Fossat.

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