Lecturae Tropatorum (Dec 2011)
Giraut de Borneil, “Quan lo fregz e·l glatz e la neus” (BdT 242.60)
Abstract
This paper provides a critical edition, with a new hypothesis concerning two difficult loci, of “Quan lo fregz e·l glatz e la neus”, one of the most significant love songs by Giraut de Borneil. For l. 48 (according to the order of the stanzas in Kolsen’s edition which is confirmed here), I will argue that “gers”, present in nearly all the manuscripts and editions, but never explained satisfactorily and unique from the lexical viewpoint, is a ghost word. Thus I will suggest accepting the lesson of ms. B as a suitable, ancient conjecture: ‘of those who are inside (the beseiged castle and forced to surrender)’ que an grans guerriers, ‘who have great enemies’. For l. 58 none of the solutions put forward so far are convincing, thus I will tentatively propose a new conjecture: the lover fears that his life will become plus breus... “que del quint dels quars”, ‘shorter that the fifth of the quarter (of the day)’, that is, it will be cut off. This restores a rhetorical figure of repetition that marks the end of each stanza after the second and which has been lost in nearly all the manuscripts and editions. My reading of the text will underline its distinctive aspects: a large number of quite difficult similes, emphasis on the figure of the lover, a lack of the author intervention and of the sententiae and forms of argument that characterise this poet, a fast pace created by the syntactic and rhetorical structure. I will also examine all that may serve to place the text within a particular historical context, although despite the many hypotheses, the only sure element is that it was written for a courtly occasion in the presence of Richard the Lionheart.
