Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
her husband, Marc, because he is not Tristan. To
contradict the old saying, all cats are not gray in
the dark, and probably the greatest innovation in
the Tristan and Iseult story is the insistence that in-
dividuals cannot be commanded to love because of
social institutions or codes of loyalty. Love becomes
a wild force that threatens the social order: Tristan
loses his standing in court and the protection of
his closest kinsman, Iseult loses her husband’s trust,
and King Mark loses respect from his court because
of his lenient dealings with the pair. Yet the doomed
lovers are portrayed sympathetically in all versions
of the story, and their struggle between social obli-
gations and individual desires continues to inspire
the Western imagination.
See also ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE; MEDIEVAL RO-
MANCE.
English Versions of Tristan and Iseult
Béroul. The Romance of Tristan and the Tale of Tris-
tan’s Madness. Translated by Alan S. Fedrick. New
York: Penguin, 1978.
Early French Tristan Poems. 2 vols. Edited by Norris J.
Lacy. Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1998.
The Romance of Tristan: The Thirteenth-Century Old
French “Prose Tristan.” Translated by Renee L. Cur-
tis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Works about Tristan and Iseult
Eisner, Sigmund. The Tristan Legend: A Study in
Sources. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 1969.
Grimbert, Joan Tasker, ed. Tristan and Isolde: A Case-
book. New York: Garland, 1995.
Lacy, Norris J. and Geoffrey Ashe with Debra N. Man-
coff. The Arthurian Handbook. New York: Gar-
land, 1997.
Varvaro, Alberto. Beroul’s Romance of Tristran. New
York: Barnes & Noble, 1972.
troubadours (12th–13th centuries)
The troubadours were poets and musicians who
became common in the south of France during the
early 12th century. Like the medieval jongleur, or
minstrel, troubadours traveled widely, but unlike
the minstrels, troubadours composed and per-
formed their own work. They wrote in a medieval
language called Provençal, today called Occitan,
and their lyrics resembled modern song lyrics in
that they were meant to be sung to musical accom-
paniment. While most of the poets known to us
were male, there were also female troubadours
called trobairitz. The trouvères, the northern
French counterparts of the troubadours, borrowed
their ideas and techniques from the southern trou-
badours.
The troubadour style flourished over a span of
about 200 years. The early troubadours first ap-
peared in the first half of the 12th century in the
province of Poitiers. From 1150 to 1180, they pros-
pered under the patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine,
and in the years 1180–1209, the troubadour fash-
ion reached courts in Italy, Spain, Hungary, and
even Malta. With the beginning of the Albigensian
CRUSADE (1208), however, the interest in courtly
poetry began to decline, especially when trouba-
dours lost their wealthy patrons, and religious fer-
vor began to supplant earthly love as the popular
theme for poetry. By the late 13th century, devo-
tional songs addressed the Virgin Mary rather than
mortal women, and the troubadours effectively
disappeared.
The most important contribution the trouba-
dours and trobairitz made to Western literature
was their evolution of the concept of courtly love,
or fin’ amor (“fine love”). Courtly love, part of the
code of
CHIVALRY, concerned the worship of a noble
woman by a poet who made himself a servant to
love. This concept profoundly affected later ME-
DIEVAL ROMANCE, as seen in the works of such au-
thors as CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, MARIE DE FRANCE, and
JEAN DE MEUN, as well as in stories about King
Arthur and the HOLY GRAIL. While the style of trou-
badour poetry might be either light and courtly or
brooding and reflective, the poems frequently use
and reuse certain images, devices, and conventions
to describe the poet’s experience of love and life.
Many of the troubadour manuscripts contain
short sections called vidas (from the Latin vita
troubadours 311
“life”) that serve as a brief biography prefacing the
poet’s songs. Troubadours could be of any class,
from noble to peasant, and in the 13th century
troubadours frequented courts all over western
Europe, from Portugal to the Holy Land. Since it is
difficult to know whether the poet or another au-
thored the vidas, it is virtually impossible to deter-
mine how much is factually true and how much
was added to create interest. Several of the vidas
serve as touching narratives that could stand as
separate pieces of literature.
Critical Analysis
Troubadour poetry could address a variety of top-
ics or take on any number of forms. The vers was
often a moralizing poem, and the sirventes was a
poem of blame or praise, frequently about deeds of
war. The tenso was a debate poem that staged an
argument between two or more parties; the alba
was a song addressed to the dawn; the pastorela,
based on the Greek pastoral image, involved the
love affairs of shepherds and shepherdesses; and
the planh was a lament on the death of a king or
other important personage.
By far the most prevalent and influential of the
genres was the canso, the song about love. In their
treatments of love, troubadours often drew on bib-
lical sources but also borrowed classical tropes from
love poets such as
OVID. From this they developed a
concept of courtly love with very specific rules. The
poet is invariably in love with a noble lady or
domna, a situation innovated by William IX, Count
of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine (born 1071), the
earliest recorded troubadour. The lady is portrayed
as possessing refined manners and speech and sur-
passing beauty. William writes,“[f]or the sweetness
of her welcome, for her beautiful and gentle
look...a man who wins to the joy of her love will
live a hundred years.” To love the lady is the chief
joy of the poet’s life. As William says:
“The joy of her can make the sick man well
again, her wrath can make a well man die....”
The French troubadour Marcabru (fl. ca. 1130–56),
supports this notion that love is the pursuit of the
poet’s life, singing: “He whom noble Love singles
out lives gay, courtly and wise; and he whom it re-
jects, it confounds, and commits to total destruc-
tion.” And Arnaut Daniel declares that he prefers
his lady’s love to any of earth’s highest honors: “I’d
not have the empire of Rome, nor be made pope of
it, if thereby I might not return to her for whom my
heart burns and crackles.”
But the lady whom the poet adores is married,
so the lover can only long for her from a distance,
which produces an understandable state of dis-
tress. Equally distressing to the lover is the lady’s
behavior, which according to the rules of courtly
love may be gracious or distant by turns. Some-
times she will treat him with warm affection,
sometimes with icy disdain, and she may destroy
his heart by faithlessly giving herself to another.
Additionally, the lover may suffer from competi-
tors’ slanders, all of which add a tone of lament to
the poetry. As Peire VIDAL complains, “No more
than the fish can live without water, love-service
cannot be without slanderers, hence lovers pay
dearly for their joy.”
When not complaining of the lady’s coldness or
infidelity, the lover in the poem frequently begs
for her attention and love, as in these lines by Ital-
ian troubadour Sordello (ca. 1200–ca. 1269): “For
Pity’s sake I pray you, fair beloved, that with some
little crumb of love’s joy you come to my help,
swiftly....For otherwise I can have no joy, unless
pity and mercy take you.” In any circumstance, the
pursuit of his lady causes the poet to suffer. Thus,
love is the highest and most astonishing experience
of which the human being is capable.
The female trobairitz, though addressing male
lovers, use the same stylistic techniques and ex-
press the same sentiments of courtly love. For ex-
ample, the Countess of Dia sings of her fidelity to
her lover and her joy in love:
...my love for him has never strayed,
nor is my heart the straying kind.
312 troubadours
I’m very happy, for the man
whose love I seek’s so fine.
In another verse, she expresses a bitter lament over
her lover’s coldness and lack of faith:
...I feel your heart turn adamant
toward me, friend: it’s not right another
love
take you away from me, no matter what she
says.
The clear style, pitch of feeling, and complexity
of emotion achieved in troubadour lyrics helps ex-
plain why, when blended with skillful melodies,
these songs pleased audiences for so long and
gained the poet noble favor above all other enter-
tainers at court.
Though the early troubadour poetry reveals in-
ventive experimentation with topics and images,
later troubadour poetry became rather formulaic
in its adherence to certain devices, such as the love
triangle, the feeling that there is no joy above that
of loving another, and the lover’s long suffering
marked by periodic bursts of happiness. Though
troubadours eventually disappeared, their code of
courtly love persisted in medieval literature
through the late MIDDLE AGES into the Renaissance
and beyond, appearing in such works as Ludovico
Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The
Book of the Duchess, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte
d’Arthur, and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie
Queene. Writers of later ages and nationalities con-
tinued to elaborate on and improve the tradition
of lyric love poetry: the Italians DANTE and Pe-
trarch, the French François Villon and Pierre de
Ronsard, the Spanish Miguel Cervantes and Luis
de Góngora, the German minnesingers, and En-
glish poets from William Shakespeare to John
Donne, to name only a few. As translator Alan
Press says,“the work of the troubadours lies at the
origin of a centuries-long tradition of high lyric
poetry in western Europe.” In effect, the trouba-
dours created and communicated to the rest of Eu-
rope an original way of composing poetry and
talking about love whose forms and language have
survived in Western culture to the present day.
English Versions of Works by Troubadours
Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry. Translated and
edited by Alan R. Press. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1971.
Bogin, Meg. The Women Troubadours. Scarborough,
U.K.: Paddington Press Ltd., 1976.
Works about Troubadours
Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay, eds. The Troubadours:
An Introduction. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Paterson, Linda A. The World of the Troubadours: Me-
dieval Occitan Society ca. 1100–ca. 1300. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Troyes, Chrétien de
See CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES.
tuuwutsi narratives Hopi storytelling
Tuuwutsi represent the principal narrative genre of
Hopi traditional literature. In the custom of Native
American storytelling, these oral narratives have a
strong aural component. Among the Hopi, tu-
uwutsi are stories that a storyteller has heard sec-
ondhand. The context is secular, and the subjects
are make-believe things. The Hopi distinguish tu-
uwutsi fantasy stories from ka’atsa (“not false”)
stories, which have preserved events in Hopi his-
tory.
COYOTE TALES, called istutuwutsi, comprise a
subgenre of the tuuwutsi narratives.
Hopi storytellers typically set off the tuuwutsi
fictional narratives from normal discourse by
using special phrases that provide formulaic be-
ginnings and endings. For example, Aliksaii is the
Hopi counterpart of “once upon a time,” and
paigakpola translates as “now to where it ends.” The
audience replies in expected ways at key places as
the narratives are told.
tuuwutsi narratives 313
Some of the Hopi tuuwutsi include “The White
Dawn of the Hopi,” a story of how the Hopi came
to be; “The Hopi Boy and the Sun,” a tale about a
boy who travels with the Sun, his father, learns how
to treat people rightly, and then returns to his own
people to teach them the same; “Son of Light Kills
the Monster,” a story about how the Son of Light re-
trieves his kidnapped wife by conquering the mon-
ster Man-Eagle in a series of contests;“The Revenge
of Blue Corn Ear Maiden,” a tale of rivalry between
two friends; and “A Journey to the Skeleton House,”
a story of a young boy’s learning what became of
the dead, his journey to the Otherworld, and how
the living and the dead began to work together.
Both the tuuwutsi and ka’atsa are used by the
Hopi, as are stories in other Native American na-
tions, to recount tribal history, continue the ORAL
LITERATURE/TRADITION, explain the creation of the
world and its occupants, teach morals or lessons,
entertain, and preserve cultural traditions and
knowledge.
English Versions of Tuuwutsi Narratives
Hopi Coyote Tales: Istutuwutsi. Translated by Michael
Lomatuway’ma. Edited by Ekkehart Malotki. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Malotki, Ekkehart, and Ken Gary. Hopi Stories of
Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Magic. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 2001.
A Work about Tuuwutsi Narratives
Shaul, David Leedom. Hopi Traditional Literature. Al-
buquerque: University of Mexico Press, 2002.
314 tuuwutsi narratives
315
V
Valmiki, Maharshi (fl. ca. 550 B.C.) poet
Valmiki is the Indian seer, or rishi, credited with
creating the epic Ramayana. Because of his long
practice of penance and seclusion in his retreat by
the river Tamasa, Valmiki earned the title of Ma-
harshi, “maha” meaning great. He is celebrated as
the first poet to compose in Sanskrit, and his Ra-
mayana is considered the first real poem of India.
Legend surrounds Valmiki and the creation of
his
EPIC
work. Some stories have it that he started
life as a robber but saw the error of his ways and
became spiritually devout. According to tradition,
Valmiki was walking along the river Tamasa one
day and watched a pair of lovebirds nesting to-
gether in a tree. When a hunter approached and
killed one of the birds, Valmiki was so shocked and
distressed that he cried out, cursing the hunter,
“Thou shalt never command any respect in society
for years to come as you have shot dead one of the
innocent birds engrossed in love.” Upon consider-
ing his statement,Valmiki realized that, in the San-
skrit tongue, he had spoken four rhythmic lines of
eight syllables each, which closely resembled the
meter of Vedic literature. He decided to call this
poetic meter the sloka and use it as the form in
which to tell an epic tale of love, devotion, separa-
tion, and sacrifice. Inspired by the god Brahma and
the sage Narada, who first told him the story of
Rama as a model of humanity and kingship,
Valmiki composed the first and most beloved
poem of Indian history.
In the tradition of Sanskrit literature, the Ra-
mayana is thought to closely follow the Vedas and
thus is of an earlier date than the
PURANA or the MA-
HABHARATA, the longest and most ornate of epics.
Like other ancient poems, the Ramayana most
likely first existed as a collection of stories passed
along by storytellers who recited the poem by
heart. Valmiki, though considered the poet, may
never have put his work into written form. Schol-
ars of Indian literature have debated at length
about the date of composition, and no firm con-
sensus has yet been reached. Tradition places the
poet at the dawn of history, shortly after the
Aryans began to migrate into what is now India.
The majority of Ramayana scholars believe from
various archaeological and other literary evidence
that Valmiki, and Rama, lived sometime between
the seventh and 11th centuries B.C. A genealogy of
kings, which exists in the Purana, cites Rama as an
actual prince of the Ikshavaku dynasty, but no
dates are given.
The poem has been so extensively revised, ex-
tended, and transcribed that distinguishing the
original subject matter devised by Valmiki from
the later additions becomes simply an argument of
style. Scholar C. V. Vaidya believes that sometime
in the first century
B.C., the poem was rewritten
and recompiled into the form in which it exists
today. Originally the poem celebrated Rama as a
great man and the best of kings. The first-century
additions and adaptations reflect the evolving be-
liefs concerning the avatars, or incarnations, of the
god Vishnu. In Hindu tradition, the gods incar-
nated in human form to provide models for right
living and intervene in certain affairs. In the Ma-
habharata, the god Vishnu incarnated as Krishna to
help Arjuna win his great battle. After the compo-
sition of the Mahabharata, it was seen that Rama
had been the god Vishnu in a different, previous
form that had come to earth expressly to conquer
the demonic tyrant Ravana. Scribes embellished
the text of the Ramayana to reflect that belief.
Most critics accept the attribution of the Ra-
mayana to Valmiki because the poet appears in two
places in the action of the epic itself. In the first,
during their exile in the forest, Rama, his wife Sita,
and his brother Lakshmana visit Valmiki in his re-
mote hermitage and converse with him. Later, after
Rama has been restored to the throne but has had
to banish Sita on suspicion of infidelity, Valmiki
brings two young boys, Lava and Kusha, to court.
The boys sing the story of Rama, and Valmiki then
reveals that these two are the sons of Rama and
Sita. Both of these instances, however, create con-
fusion when compared to the rest of the poem. If
Sita and Rama visited Valmiki in the woods, then
he presumably already knew their story and would
not need Narada to explain it to him.Also, the rev-
elation of Rama’s sons and Sita’s final trial take
place in the last portion of the work, which some
scholars believe is a later addition or appendix and
not the work of Valmiki himself. Similar contra-
dictions and confusions appear throughout the
poem, most likely due to its age and the number
of people who have contributed to its retelling. As
an example of poetic literature, the Ramayana
nevertheless stands as a work of great beauty and
extraordinary influence.
Critical Analysis
Though the Ramayana can be appreciated as sim-
ply an epic story, along the lines of the
SHAH
-
NAMEH of Persia or the German NIBELUNGENLIED, it
is, as scholar V. Sitaramiah says, “a great literary
and poetical document.” More than just the life or
adventures (ayana) of Rama, the Ramayana doc-
uments philosophical insights and human truths.
Like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is con-
cerned with the Hindu concept of dharma, which
means not only duty but also right conduct. The
conduct of Rama is considered an excellent ex-
ample of following dharma because Rama em-
bodies all of the virtues of the ideal man: He is
modest of nature, physically able, intellectually
brilliant, and spiritually aware. He shows com-
passion and consideration for all beings, is bal-
anced in his emotions, accepts any challenge that
will benefit the general good, and demonstrates
complete reverence for and obedience to his eld-
ers. A fitting companion, his wife Sita, in her turn,
embodies all the virtues of the ideal woman. She
is described as “proud and peerless,” surpassingly
beautiful, and steadfastly faithful. Rama wins her
in true epic fashion by performing a mighty feat:
He breaks a bow that no other suitor had been
able to bend, thus showing himself worthy of her
hand.
The adventures of Rama and Sita commence
with his willing exile into the forest. Rama is the
son of King Dasarath and destined to become the
next ruler of Kosala and its capital city, Ayodhya.
One of the king’s wives, Kaikeyi, convinces
Dasarath that her son Bharata should rule.
Though all are distressed by the king’s decision,
Rama cheerfully obliges the will of his father and
prepares to go into exile. Sita and Lakshmana in-
sist on going with him. For 10 years they live
peacefully and idyllically, until the demon Ravana
decides to capture Sita. Through a series of de-
316 Valmiki, Maharshi
ceits, he manages to fly away with her to his island
country of Lanka, where he holds her prisoner.
Rama is joined in his search by the creatures of the
forest. He and his army of forest dwellers attack
Ravana, and the poem recounts in detail every
blow of the battle that follows. In the end, Rama
vanquishes Ravana, and Sita undergoes a trial by
fire to prove that she was faithful to her husband
throughout her imprisonment. The original por-
tion of the Ramayana concludes with Rama and
Sita returning to Adodhya and ascending the
throne in triumph:
Fourteen years of woe were ended, Rama
now assumed his own,
And they placed the weary wand’rer on his
father’s ancient throne.
Some modern translations include the last
chapter, though it is considered spurious, where
Sita is banished once more and bears her chil-
dren in exile. Valmiki brings them to court,
where they sing the epic, and in the dramatic
confrontation between Sita and her husband,
the earth opens and swallows Sita as the final
proof of her innocence. Thereafter, Rama, who
remains unmarried, has a golden image of Sita
made, which he places beside him on her
throne.
The Ramayana of India appears in other litera-
tures of Southeast Asia, including the Buddhist
Dasartha
JATAKA and the Ramakien of Thailand.
The Raghuvamsa of KALIDASA and the Ramcharit-
manas of Tulsidas both draw from the Ramayana.
Professor Wardiman Djojonegoro of Indonesia
concludes that the Ramayana manages to cross
many borders and many centuries because the
essence of the story remains a “universal source of
inspiration.” He writes: “The Rama story articu-
lates and projects a set of moral and ethical values,
against which we can evaluate our own human ex-
istence....It opens vistas that enable us to enrich
our own lives.”
English Versions of a Work by
Maharshi Valmiki
Ramayana. Translated by William Buck. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000.
Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian
Epic. Translated by Ramesh Menon. New York:
North Point Press, 2004.
Ramayana: India’s Immortal Tale of Love, Adventure,
and Wisdom. Translated by Krishna Dharma. Los
Angeles: Torchlight Publishing, 2000.
Works about Maharshi Valmiki
Blank, Jonah. Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Tracing
the Ramayana Through India. New York: Grove
Press, 2000.
Rao, I. Panduranga. Valmiki. New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1994.
Vatsyayana Mallanga
See KAMA SUTRA.
Veldeke, Heinrich von
See HEINRICH VON VELDEKE.
Venerable Bede
See BEDE.
Ventadour, Bernard de
See BERNARD DE VENTADOUR.
Vidal, Peire (Piere Vidal) (ca. 1183–
ca. 1204) poet
Vidal, a Provençal TROUBADOUR who combined el-
egant simplicity with technically demanding met-
rical forms, was born in Toulouse, France, the son
of a furrier. He began his troubadour career in
Marseilles and also spent time at the court of King
Alfonso II of Aragon. Vidal spent most of his life
Vidal, Peire 317
traveling between the courts of Marseilles, Aragon,
and Toulouse. In 1196, after Alfonso of Aragon
died, Vidal visited the court of King Emmerich of
Hungary. He may or may not have joined Marquis
Boniface of Montferrat on a
CRUSADE in 1202, but
he was at the Island of Malta in 1204. He probably
died in Provence between 1208 and 1210.
The hallmark of Vidal’s poetic style is his clarity
and simplicity of expression, a characteristic he
shares with
BERNARD DE VENTADOUR. Unlike ARNAUT
DANIEL, who combined technical mastery with ob-
scure vocabulary and metaphor, Vidal strove to
make his work melodious and accessible to his au-
dience. He specialized in the canso-sirventes, a
Provençal poetic form that mingles the ethos of
courtly love (see CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE) with
contemporary political references. This form gives
Vidal’s readers a sense of his restless, brilliant per-
sonality. He boasts of his prowess in court tourneys
and especially with the ladies:
I am such an one that a thousand greetings
come to me every day from Catalonia and from
Lombardy, for every day my value mounts and
increases, wherefore the King nearly dies of
envy, for I have my fun and pleasure with ladies.
Vidal’s claims need to be taken with a grain of
salt. According to the rather fantastic biography
that precedes his poetry in several manuscripts, he
traveled to Cyprus and married a Greek woman,
whom he claimed was a niece of the emperor in
Constantinople. He was also given to extravagant
behavior; when one of his patrons, Count Raimon
of Toulouse, died, Vidal mourned him by not only
donning black clothing but also by cropping and
docking his horses’ ears and tails and shaving his
and his servants’ heads. When Vidal loved a
woman named Loba (which means “she-wolf” in
Provençal), he made the wolf his heraldic emblem
and even put on a wolf skin to be the prey of a
mock wolf hunt to gain her pity and attention.
Surprisingly, this eccentric man’s poetry reveals a
directness and elegance in language that makes
him one of the era’s most accessible and honored
troubadours.
An English Version of Works by Peire Vidal
Trobador Poets: Selections from the Poems of Eight
Trobadors. Translated by Barbara Smythe. Lon-
don: Chatto & Windus, 1911.
Vigne, Pier delle (Pier della Vigna,
Pietro della Vigna, Petrus de Vineis)
(ca. 1190–1249) poet
Pier delle Vigne was born in the Italian city of
Capua. He studied law at Bologna and became a
notary at the court of Emperor Frederick II of
Swabia (in southwest Germany), who was also king
of Sicily. Vigne helped to draw up Swabia’s law
codes, and in 1220 he became secretary of the im-
perial chancellery. His rank, wealth, and power
only grew exponentially.
It is believed that in 1244, Frederick II sent
Vigne to help THOMAS AQUINAS’s family forcibly re-
trieve young Thomas, who had recently become a
monk against their wishes. By 1247, Vigne was a
key member of the emperor’s inner circle. In 1249,
however, he fell from power, possibly because he
had been falsely accused of treason. Frederick or-
dered that Vigne be blinded and led before the
public in chains. Disgraced, Vigne died shortly
thereafter. Some sources say that he died acciden-
tally, others that he deliberately hit his head against
a wall. In his Inferno, DANTE depicts Vigne as inno-
cent of treason but guilty of committing suicide.
Vigne was a member of the Sicilian school of
poetry, which translator Frede Jensen describes as
“the first truly national literary movement in
Italy.” The school, which flourished at Frederick
II’s court between 1230 and 1250, included at least
25 poets who wrote poems of
CHIVALRY and
COURTLY LOVE
in the Sicilian dialect. Its members
drew inspiration from earlier Provençal TROUBA-
DOURS
like BERNARD DE VENTADOUR and JAUFRÉ
RUDEL. Unlike the hired troubadours, however, the
“Sicilians” were civil servants and nobles.
318 Vigne, Pier delle
Vigne’s surviving works include several letters
written in Latin and a few poems, including two
love poems. In “’ Twas Love, whom I desire as well
as trust,” the poet assures his love that he “would
speak well, and not be shy, / in telling you I have
long loved you, more / than Pyramus his Thisbe
could adore.”
Unlike troubadours’ works, Pier delle Vigne’s
poems are meant to be read rather than sung. They
are not lively, but they are elegantly crafted.
An English Version of a Work by
Pier delle Vigne
“’Twas Love, whom I desire as well as trust.” In The
Age of Dante: An Anthology of Early Italian Poetry.
Translated by Joseph Tusiani. New York: Baroque
Press, 1974.
A Work about Pier delle Vigne
Jensen, Frede, ed. and trans. The Poetry of the Sicilian
School. New York and London: Garland, 1986.
Villehardouin, Geoffroi de (ca. 1150–
ca. 1212) historian
Geoffroi de Villehardouin, considered to be the
first French historian who wrote in his native
tongue, was born into a noble family in Cham-
pagne, France. In 1185, he became Champagne’s
marshal, an important administrative position in
the hierarchy of feudalism. Marshals were respon-
sible for making and overseeing military prepara-
tions and also served as deputies to their lords in
governing their provinces. Villehardouin must
have had excellent organizational and communi-
cation skills for such a position. From 1198 to
1207, he was involved in the Fourth
CRUSADE and
was also made marshal of Romania (presently
Thrace, in Greece) and given a fiefdom there. This
firsthand experience made him well suited to write
an account of the crusade.
The Fourth Crusade began in 1198, when Pope
Innocent III called for a crusade against the Mus-
lims in Egypt. Initially, his call was ignored, but
French nobles finally gathered together in Cham-
pagne in 1199 to declare and organize the Crusade.
After enlisting the help of the Venetians, the cru-
saders quickly became split by differing political
goals. Some decided to go into Syria, but others,
led by the Venetians and Philip of Swabia, decided
that they first needed to restore the rightful heir,
Alexius Angelus, to the Byzantine Empire to the
throne of Constantinople. This group, led by Boni-
face of Montferrat, who was also the patron of the
troubadour Peire
VIDAL, was the one Villehardouin
accompanied to Constantinople. Byzantines did
not particularly like or want Alexius Angelus as
their emperor, but in 1203, the crusaders con-
quered Constantinople, and he was made Emperor
Alexius IV. The crusaders found themselves to be
an unpopular occupying force, putting down
pockets of rebellion throughout Constantinople
and the neighboring countryside. When Alexius IV
died in 1204, the Venetians and French were con-
vinced he had been murdered and once more at-
tacked the city. Constantinople fell, and for four
days, the Western forces sacked the city. The
Byzantine Empire was divided among the Vene-
tians, the French, and other European rulers, and
a Latin Empire was established in the region, with
Baldwin of Flanders elected as the new emperor.
Villehardouin’s history of the Fourth Crusade, La
Conquête de Constantinople (The Conquest of Con-
stantinople) is significant as a historical and literary
document. A valuable eyewitness account of the im-
portant meetings and decisions that motivated the
crusaders, it is also the first history written in
French. In relating the events of the Fourth Cru-
sade with exactitude and precision, Villehardouin
pleads in good faith in favor of the Crusaders’ high
command and creates a valuable historical and lit-
erary document. Villehardouin’s style is clear, con-
cise, and well organized, and his account of the
Fourth Crusade influenced the style of French his-
torians beyond the Renaissance. Villehardouin dis-
appeared from the political limelight in 1207 and
died without ever having returned home.
Villehardouin, Geoffroi de 319
An English Version of a Work by
Geoffroi de Villehardouin
Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades.
Translated by M. R. B. Shaw. Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1963.
A Work about Geoffroi de Villehardouin
Beer, Jeanette M. A. Villehardouin: Epic Historian.
Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968.
Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro, P. Vergilius
Maro, Vergil)
(70–19 B.C.) poet
Virgil’s birthplace was the village of Andes near the
northern Italian city of Mantua in the ancient
Roman province known as Cisalpine Gaul, on the
Roman side of the Alps. His father, who seems to
have been a cattle farmer, beekeeper, and manufac-
turer of earthenware, once worked as a servant for
a man whose daughter he married and must have
become fairly prosperous, since he could afford to
educate his son for an elite career.
Virgil attended schools in several cities. When
he was approximately 11 years old, he was sent to
Cremona, about 75 miles from Milan, to study
grammar and literature. At the time, Julius
CAESAR
was governor of Cisalpine Gaul and advocated full
citizenship and self-government for the Cisalpines.
Virgil developed an enduring admiration for Cae-
sar and for
AUGUSTUS, his successor, that would last
a lifetime. In 55 B.C., Virgil continued his school-
ing in Milan, then moved to Rome when he was
around 18 to put the finishing touches on his edu-
cation. He was lectured on Latin and Greek prose
style, including forms of expression, literary de-
vices and conventions, and rules of composition.
Bored with the rigidity of these topics, he studied
rhetoric with a popular instructor as preparation
for a career in law or politics, but this discipline,
too, he found restrictive and technical. In any case,
he proved he had no knack for public speaking. He
was, however, interested in writing verse, and he
cultivated friendships with a group of writers
known as the “New Poets,” who were experiment-
ing in Latin with classical Greek poetic techniques.
While in Rome, he enjoyed the patronage of men
of wealth and influence, as he would for virtually
his entire career.
LUCRETIUS’s On the Nature of Things was an
enormous inspiration to Virgil, who copied the
poet’s use of hexameter and emulated his faith in
the wisdom of the Greek philosopher EPICURUS and
his followers. The Epicureans blended an interest
in nature, including human nature, with scientific
analysis and made the pursuit of pleasure a legiti-
mate way of life. “The effect of Lucretius on Virgil
was tremendous,” writes scholar Olivia Coolidge in
Lives of Famous Romans. Virgil’s “artistry, more
subtle than that of Lucretius, is only possible be-
cause of the earlier poet’s work.” Indeed, Virgil
spent most of his adult life in an Epicurean colony
in Naples. (Despite his inclinations, Virgil was an
unsophisticated man, diffident, physically awk-
ward, perhaps embarrassed by his provincial ac-
cent, and of a delicate constitution. He never
married.)
In 42 B.C., Augustus (then Octavian), seeking to
settle 200,000 discharged troops, ruthlessly confis-
cated entire districts in Cisalpine Gaul, including,
probably, Virgil’s boyhood home. The family’s es-
tate was restored, possibly due to the intervention
of a powerful friend, but Virgil was deeply moved
by the suffering around the countryside and the
misery of those who had been evicted from their
homes. Beyond these borders was a collective
weariness and disillusionment among a popula-
tion that had just experienced the wrenching tran-
sition from a Roman republic to an empire.
Virgil purportedly wrote in his own epitaph, “I
sang of pastures, of cultivated fields, and of rulers.”
These three subjects correspond chronologically to
his works: Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid. The
Eclogues are pastoral poems patterned as dialogue
sung by shepherds. They represent Virgil’s re-
sponse to the misery he witnessed in contrast to
the pastoral splendor and time of tranquillity that
preceded it. His themes are the death and renewal
inherent in nature, and the work suggests past tra-
320 Virgil