 Okay, hello everyone and you might be a little bit surprised that today I'm not in class but I am attending a conference and so I've asked Martina to help me a little bit to do our class in a virtual fashion as if this were an online course but it's okay. Sometimes a little bit different format, I think it should be just fine as well and so my purpose was to talk about the texts and discuss a little bit with Martina. There's also a great way for all of you to read it to get to meet Martina a little bit better. Now she's on film which is great so you know who she really is and we both will just talk about the texts, the Trouba Ritz, the women Troubadours and I thought we just go through some of the historical context, the literary framework and then look at some of these examples because I would say and I hope you all would agree this is really interesting material. It might be a little bit strange coming from a man saying this is really interesting material this is finally where we hear the female voice. You know, we talked about the Kamina Burana and I would sometimes rather heart on these male writers sometimes we're attacking them for their sexist attitudes and their macho behavior and the almost idealization of sexual violence in some cases and then on last class time we talked about the Troubadours and of course their new attempts to explore the whole theme of love and suddenly having all these men knights writing love poems. It's kind of a strange thing, isn't it? And then we all turn to the women poets in a minute. Martina, let's just talk a little bit. Have you ever written poems? I mean it's kind of strange, right? Normally people think they are the poets and that's us. Have you ever written poems? Yeah, I do still write from time to time. What do you do? Why? I do that too, by the way. Yeah, I heard one of yours on the Shell of Water, I do remember. Why? To express myself in a certain way, to express experiences, emotions in a certain way. Are they difficult to write? I mean, you want to write a really good poem and these writers, the Troubadours, they wanted to write really good poems. It depends on the topic though. It really depends on what you write and if it's only an intuitive emotion, then it just comes and you just write and it's different. But then you know also at some point this is good or you still labor on this and you know it's not quite right. I think it will never be quite good with your own... You have the feeling at some point. But wouldn't you agree that both with their coming up around and as well with the Troubadour poetry, that is labor. This is hard work. This is really an expression of high artistic skills. So I think this is the first major thing I've talked already about that a bit on Tuesday. But poetry, this is the new call, the new hallmark of these nobles. This is now 12th century. This is the time of the Crusades. That's the new development of courtly culture. And suddenly for men it is very, very important to write poetry and to perform music to demonstrate the elegance of their style, their cultural development. So I think we had already a couple of examples and Guillaume de Neuf was a little bit art character, a little bit mixed but let's leave that aside and now turn to the counterpart. So far, always men. And it sounds like as if love is a theme only by men. But of course, that's not true. 50% of the population always have been women. And now we have the Troubadour women. We call them Trouberitz. And they write about the same time. Anna Quatschumatino, were you familiar with these poems or did you even ever hear of women writing poetry? Of women writing poetry, of course. But not necessarily in the Middle Ages. And why would you have thought that in the Middle Ages women were not writing? What is a general assumption? Because of the public voices that more or less only belong to men and because of how the society was. So patriarchal society, right? Carrying over even to the secular world, the courts, women have to be quiet, women are the receivers of orders, women are quiet. But in the world of courtly love, all kinds of strange things happened really. And this does not necessarily mean what we think about the history of women as we see it from the 21st century is necessarily true or right in terms of what happened in the Middle Ages. It's a very odd situation because in the 19th century we have the beginning of a women's movement. In the 19th century women started fighting for equal rights, voting rights and so forth and so forth. And we are the heirs, thank God, of that women's movement. But in the 19th century women needed to find escape goats. They needed to have a rallying point and project it then in a very powerful and successful way the world in the past must always be negative. The world of our grandmothers are always worse than our world, right? Our poor great-great-grandmothers, they were just kitchen children church, right? The German KKK, right? Kitchen children church. Pardon for the allusion here but we play a little bit of fun on that because it's the German words Kirche, Küche and Kinder. So it's the German KKK, but it's also very negative. That's what we don't want. We don't want women today just to be stuck at home. And I think what we face now is really exciting. For me it's really exciting as a researcher, as a teacher to present you here with new material that suddenly like sort of a sputnik, like a comet suddenly showing up that women could speak up, it took a long time for researchers to find these materials because think about it, think about your own education, Martina. How many of your professors were men so far? Let's leave the University of Arizona aside because there are a little bit different situations but back home. Okay, back home, how many? Just general percentage-wise. General percentage-wise. Well, when I look back, actually there were more women in German studies. They're usually even the students are more women than men. Yeah, so that is probably certainly true but if you think back maybe. But when I go to the, for instance, when I do read the secondary literature, there are mostly men, that's true. I mean most women were allowed into academia only in the 1960s or so. I mean I got my PhD at the University of Virginia in 1986 and women were allowed at that university only in 1960. I mean they're students. So the case is very clear. If you have only male scholars, male medievalists, male philologists, male scholars in general, why would they care about female issues? And so modern feminism, the entire scholarly approach to what was the history of women, women's writing, women's self-expression is also closely connected with these texts. And I think they are really wonderful because they suddenly shatter that idea that women were always completely subjugated. To some extent, certainly true. We always have patriarchy, the church, certainly holding very strong control over women, right? But if we look at these poems, they are troberitz. That's what we call troberitz. It's a little bit odd sounding word but we'll talk about that in a minute. But you do have suddenly a large corpus, a body of texts that were written by women. Still, it's a little bit difficult sometimes to identify precisely who these women were but that's common for all medieval literature. We don't quite know because the biography has not handed down to us. The documents don't tell us that much. However, the selection we have here is firm. We know these noble ladies, they are documented through other sources as well. And I think, and this is really where I need here, Martina, I think if we, in general, if we go through all those poems and think about their tone, their concerns, their troubles, their pride, their ideas, is there something, I mean, would you confirm or disagree with me, that there is something typically feminine? Female concerns? Yeah. Yeah? In what sense? Well, as being suppressed by society, there should be, only from the circumstance looking on it, there should be a different perspective. Yes, to express this and as well to express their role. Yeah? They reflect the subjugation. They reflect how hard it is for them, right, to come through. And so I think in these Trouba Ritz poems, we have an incredibly valuable document, literary documents that confirm how much that struggle for equality actually started much, much earlier. And sometimes that's the irony of history. History does not progress necessarily in a linear fashion. History does not move forward in a progressive fashion. So you could say in 1200, we had that condition. 1400, we had that. Oh, and then it got better, 1600, and then 1800, even better. And today, we're in the 21st century. So we are at the peak. I don't think it works that way. History goes up and down. And sometimes there are big struggles that people lose, other people win. So negotiations go back and forth. And so simply the assumption that because women in the 19th century or let's say 18th century were totally subjugated, doesn't necessarily mean that they were also equally completely and even worse subjugated in the Middle Ages than we would have thought, assume. So this documentation is really remarkable. However, I also must say a very unique phenomenon. But you know, the term troberitz, I mean, here it says troubadours, women troubadours. I always refer to troberitz. It sounds harsh, troberitz. So just simply by the sound of the name troberitz, where are they located? Do you have an idea? More like eastern? No, it's more southern. It's southern France. It's the Provence. And it is the world where they speak Occitan, which has a lot actually in common with Catalan. So the Spanish-French world in southern France merges and you have an individual new form of language which is called Occitan. And so that's what they spoke. Occitan, for that reason, the troberitz. It's a little bit unusual, the sound. Okay, the very amazing feature here is that we do have these troberitz. These are women who wrote in the early 12th century, maybe up to 1260, 1280, but then they disappear. That's a very interesting thing. We do have a literary phenomenon, almost an enigma, almost a riddle. At some point, a certain group of people, maybe women, were able to speak up, to formulate their thoughts about love, to partake in that general discussion about love. And what I find fascinating, they insist always on their own individuality, on their ability to speak their mind, to express themselves, to fight against wrongdoing. I think we will look at a couple of examples where these women then, my gosh, they accuse the men of saying, hey, infidelity, I don't like that. He ran away, or he abandoned me. What a bastard! But this is remarkable. It is remarkable for a number of reasons. One, these women were the first. We don't have any previous women, I mean secular women writers. We have lots of religious writers, women writers, monastic writers, women who lived in monasteries and wrote. Already in the 10th century. Actually, even earlier, we do have those names, and that makes good sense. They're part of the monastic culture. So Hildegard of Bingen is another famous example. Duorda is a 9th-century Merovingian writer. We have Rossvied of Gondersheim, a 10th-century writer. So a whole bunch of these monastic writers, wonderful. But in the secular world, in other words, in the world of the courts, we have a one-time phenomenon. In the early 12th century, these turbolettes come forth and then they disappear again. And then we look all over Europe, England, France, Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain. We don't have any other women. Nowhere, the entire medieval European landscape is empty. Or as far as least as we can tell. I discovered a whole bunch of women writers in 15th and 16th centuries German song books. At least where women speak up. Whether they actually were poems created by women, I do not know. Or often it's difficult to say no names. Very difficult. Sometimes religious poems, then it's clear there is a name. But these secular poems, erotic poems, very difficult to really say that. So we have to look very carefully at the content. Hence my question for you. Did you get the sense that there was an idea of feminine concerns? Maybe, because I was wondering if maybe some women were writing under a male, like under a man's name, to actually be able to get recognition. Exactly. That's one possibility. We never quite know this. So we have lots of names in these big collections. Troubadour poems, hundreds and hundreds. And it could well be that a woman used a male pseudonym possible. But we also have the other odd phenomenon that a number of men used a female mask and they pretended to be a woman. Simply I would say for theatrical purposes. Just role-playing. And this is not uncommon anyway. Women were not even allowed on stages until I think the 18th century or so. And so let's say if you think about Shakespeare. Never mind whether you have female roles or male roles. They are all men, male actors. The more difficult question is why do these women speak up? And I think if we turn to the countess of Dia, and then later to some other of these writers, like Acele de Poserage and so forth. We know about 15 names. They all live at about the same time. As I said, early 12th century. And that's precisely also the time when you have major development of the crusade. The first crusade takes place at the end of the 11th century. So 1096, they win Jerusalem, 1099. And from then on you have one crusade after the other. 12 or 4, for example. The crusaders don't even get to Jerusalem. They defeat Constantinople, I haven't said. It's a Christian city, but anyway. So you do have one crusade after the other. And what happens when you have a crusade? What happens with the men? I mean, thousands of nobles, they die. Or let me be really nasty. They stay in Palestine, have a new girlfriend, and think, what the heck? Why should I care about my wife back home? So we don't know. But there's a number of, actually. It is not so far fetched. We have a number of chroniclers who write about the crusader states. So what we call today Palestine and Israel. So early 12th century and complain bitterly about the Christian knights who adapt to the Arabic culture, take baths, perfume, learn Arabic, have girlfriends. Oh my God, what happened there? So this is a huge topic we don't quite know. But there's a lot of criticism against the crusaders. The knights. So anyway, in general, there are lots of possibilities. What could happen with the crusaders? What do you think? What do you imagine? So they all go, march, or take a boat, a ship to the Holy Land. It's suddenly really hot. And they have to fight. What happens with many of these men? Well, first I would say they die. They die. They can drown. A famous German emperor drowned, actually. They can get malaria. They can die from their wounds. Infection, bad hospitals, no good sanitation. Or whatever. There are many, many possible reasons. Or the ship could go under. We had Apollonia. The eastern Mediterranean is not necessarily the safest sea. So in the first half of the 12th century, you could almost say we have a huge loss of men. They just disappear either permanently or just for a short time. We don't know. They might have returned. And we believe that this provided a lot of these noble ladies with an opportunity. They ran their states. Their husbands weren't there. Their brothers or their fathers weren't there. So they filled the void. And it's really quite fascinating, because it's the only time when we do have the secular love poetry. We do not have secular love poetry, that's all, in Germany. We do not have it in England. We do not have it in Spain. We do not have it in Scandinavia. We do have some female poets in Scandinavia, but they normally write, I mean Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and they write very aggressive military poems, more sort of in the heroic tradition. Not the same as this. So it's a very unique phenomenon. And however we want to interpret these drubarits, I think what we need to do is kind of develop a thesis. Another great example, maybe we could just look at, let's take a look at the very first poem by T. Balls. I didn't mention it. Maybe both could try to develop a thesis. So would you want to read it? The poem? Just read the poem quickly. Okay. Sweet handsome friend, I can tell you truly that I've never been without desire since it pleased you that I have you as my courtly lover, nor did a time ever arrive, sweet handsome friend, when I didn't want to see you often, nor did I ever feel regret, nor did I ever come to pass if you went off angry, that I felt joy until you had come back, nor... And then it breaks off as a friend. It's alright for me. Yes. So it's a very short poem, and a woman speaks, we know for sure, and she emphasizes her desire, her love. There seemed to have been tensions, but she insists that she always wanted him to come back. Then to see him. To see him. In other words, she insists on her right to have a lover, to enjoy her love. This is a very fleeting, maybe ephemeral development of poetic individuality. Ephemeral, so just passing, passing through the times, but it was there for a while. And she insists, and that's really so remarkable, that the female is given a chance to express that. After all, keep in mind, we talked about manuscripts, and we talked about how difficult it is to preserve any text from that time period. So only if you have a lot of money, if you have parchment, if you have a scribe, and if you have a whole team of people who support you in that process, can you make sure that your poetry survives? So these women are all noble ladies. They have money, they have status, they have reputation at their time, and they use this as T-Boars does to express her desire. So for me, a thesis would be, just based on that little poem here, the fragmented poem, as I just would formulate, as the poem by T-Boars indicates, Torbaritz poets were powerful, self-assured 12th century courtly ladies who knew how to formulate and defend their own emotions, and gained thereby, that's then the conclusion of the thesis, gained cultural social independence on the basis of their feelings of love. Do you think it's a thesis we could work with? Yeah, sure, yeah. It's kind of challenging, right? It's very structural. So, but now, you know, that's what you always have to do. Now you have to go back to the text. Now comes then the argument, now you have to go back to the text, and they have to say, this line says, or as she, the poet, emphasizes, or in light of the words or phrases she uses, or with respect to the tension that she reflects, we can observe how much she insists on her own erotic individuality, and so forth and so forth, right? And so that's the argument, and then you would conclude, if you were writing just about this tiny little poem, indeed the thesis holds because we have seen this and this, and the paper works. Let's take a look at the Countess of Dia. And I think that's just, yeah. Yeah, uh-huh. I thrive on youth and joy. Youth and joy keep me alive. So what I think is so important here, and by the way, I have the music, so we can play this afterwards, what she is insisting so much, how important love can be to develop her own individuality to, and I think this might be the hallmark of all of courtly love discourse. Whatever we will read, if you are a good lover, you gain honor. Love, however, under what circumstances, if you love honestly, purely, selflessly. Faithfully. Faithfully. Exactly. That comes through all the time. The Tullarits are angry at times, right? Against these faithless men who have run away, or they're angry at some of their fellow sisters or sister poets who, in a way, sell their body. We have this in Aselec des Poserages. That's on page 163. I will turn to that, but if you, or maybe just do this quickly, then I'll return to Contessa de Dia. If you look at page 164, she says, For the people of Velez say, Love and money do not mix. And the woman, money chooses, they say, has lost her honor. So let me ask you, how many famous women do you know who married a man because he had money? And how many men do you know who married a famous woman because she had money? So what are they saying? They're saying honor, fidelity, loyalty, these are the values they want to emphasize. And if you look also in the second stance of page 164, reciprocate. I reciprocate. So love, is love always a take? Is love always a give? Or is love not more? Give and take? Well, yeah, it's both at the same time. We had it with Lord Henry. The girl wanted just to give, completely. And that was not love. So only once Henry had learned that he had to give and to take was he able to get well again. Of course, in a spiritual level. The girl was completely wrong, at least I would say. Because she only wanted to give. She thought her well-being, her rescue would rest in just giving herself. Just sacrifice is not love. You need to have something as well. You need to be an individual. So I think that's what comes through in these poems. These poems are great in this regard. Let's go back to the very first one as a countess of Dion. We have to watch time a little bit. I like books on page 160. Why don't we take the third stanza? The lady who knows? Shall I read it? The lady who knows about Valar should place her affection in a courteous and worthy night as soon as she has seen his worth and she should dare to love him face to face. For courteous and worthy men can only speak with great esteem of a lady who loves openly. Loves openly. No secrecy. Yeah, and she says here and worthy men can only speak with great esteem of a lady who loves openly. My gosh, I find that's feminist. That's very feminist, yeah. It's wonderful. It's so refreshing. We don't need necessarily to have, let's say, 20th century feminists. We can start already here. And I think because we are in a very unexpected context, we didn't expect to find these strong voices in the Middle Ages. Wow, that's great stuff. They say that love has something to do intimately with, or intensively, with honor, with openness. You should not feel ashamed. You should not hide. You should be able to stand up for your love. And love leads to honor, leads to courteousness. Or we might say, shivery. Worthiness, esteem, great lovers. And actually this holds true throughout the centuries. If you think about world literature from day one of mankind until today, who are the most famous people? Lovers. Always. I mean, they might have failed. Think about whatever. In Dante, you might think of Abelain Eloise, whose text we do have in this textbook as well. Famous, famous lovers who might have failed, but the reputation rests on them. Because if they die, you know, maybe Shakespeare has many examples. The woman who then dies. Or the man who dies. Maybe the most famous lovers come to my mind. And all of you might know this too. That's in Shakespeare. But it actually goes back to Overt. Pyramus in Cisper. These are the lovers, right, who want to find their freedom and they escape from their parents' home. They want to meet out in the forest and shh, what is it? I think it's him. No, it's her, who gets there first. But there's a lioness. So she gets scared, leaves a coat behind and hides in a cave. And the lioness, who just had babies, sees the coat and tears it apart. But since her whole body is still bloody from the birth, the coat gets bloody. And then Pyramus arrives, sees only the coat and commits suicide. Anyway, we don't have suicide here. Thank God, no, this is all fine. These lovers are simply insisting that they should can want to achieve their love. And it should be open. And it should be just right. So she refers, for example, to, at the end, to a very famous literary figure, Floris. That's a figure from a romance we don't have anymore. But Floris, your worth is known to all good men. Therefore, I make this request, please grant me your protection. So worthiness. Love translates into worthiness. Well, it makes the men worth, though, as well. That's right. So these women are strong. A strong woman is a woman who can love. Weak women cannot love properly. That would be the argument here. So if you want to love, you have to follow in a way the argument or the thesis developed by these women that true love requires a strong individual. A strong sense of self. Because what can you give? When you love, and you don't have much, you're just a very subservient, slave-type person, what can you give to your lover? What can you demand from him? You must demand something from your boyfriend, right? Or your husband, that he does something for you. Right? So I think, once again, these women speak to our heart in one way, and suddenly bring out aspects of true love that we might have forgotten or have not quite paid attention enough to. And now suddenly we're confronted with them because these women, in a very unusual context, are able to speak up and fight for love that is open, loyal, and leads to honor. And if you look at the second poem, I think there she is suddenly much more negative because I must sing so better do I feel toward him. So that could be the other side. She loves him more than anything she says. You know, page 161 on the top. Okay? Please follow me there. With him, my mercy and fine manners are in vain. Ooh, interesting. So she puts herself on top of him. She has better manners. She has more mercy, meaning virtues. My beauty, virtue, and intelligence. Intelligence. For I've been tricked and cheated as if I were completely loathsome. Strong words. Do you think a modern woman could say that or would say that? If you had no idea about these poems, you just came across these lines. It's almost post-modern. Yeah, sure. Totally. Totally, right? I mean, the experiences, I would say they stay the same. So yeah, sure, of course. And look at the next stanza. I love what she says. I have never wronged. I've never wronged. My love is honest. My love is true. And I love you more than, as she refers to another literary figure, Seguin, Lord Valenza. At least in love I have my victory since I surpass the worldliest of men. That's radical. Yeah. Very interesting what we have. We will not spend too much time. I think it's almost at the end of our time. I think it comes a little bit exhausting for everyone because it is online here and through a video. But I think we can leave more or less our discussion with this passage or maybe one more, maybe the end stanza. My worth and noble birth should have some weight. So she doesn't seem to be saying, I have a higher rank. She says, my worth. My individual value. My beauty and especially my noble thoughts. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, she's referring to herself as being intelligent and this is what she wants him to recognize. And that she has nobility. Not necessarily social ability. She means nobility of her. That's what love does. It forces you to be a noble person, to be the best person you can be. And these women insist. I like that. I like that a lot. I mean you can apply this to men as well. I mean men say that a lot. And I think we have seen it with Lord Henry as well. We have seen it with some of the Troubadour poems on Tuesday. But here it comes from a woman's mouth. And she insists. It is my inner character. Character that makes it possible to develop love. If you don't have that character, you won't have that love. That's what I've often said. Do not cheat. Do not blaturize. Otherwise your character suffers. And then you won't love. Sorry. Okay, I think that should be enough. I think you got the general gist of it. We have many more poems. We maybe can play afterwards two or three songs. So that you get at least a little bit of a sense of how this music was presented in a musical form as a performance. Okay, Martina, thank you very much. It was great having you. And I see you all then on, well, next Tuesday in class. Thank you very much.