Marcabru

Biography

Marcabru , or Marcabrun (nickname meaning “lost Bread”), lived roughly between 1110 and 1150.

Life

Marcabrun would have been born in Gascogne and would have been left in front of the door of the rich person gentleman Aldric del Vilar, who then dealt with him. But it is the troubadour Cercamon who taught to him the music and art to compose of the worms.

One knows that it was active in the years 1130, probably at the court of Poitiers. In 1137, the king of France Louis VII the Young wife Aliénor of Aquitaine, little girl of the first known troubadour, Guillaume IX of Aquitaine. Marcarbu would have followed Aliénor of Aquitaine to the court of Paris, but would have been driven out by it by its husband who did not appreciate the declarations sung with the lady of his thoughts.

Blow, it is probable that Marcabru was obliged to exile itself to live of its art; one finds his trace in Castille. In oneself, that does not have anything of surprising, insofar as the dukes of Aquitaine had followed for 100 years a policy of opening in direction of Spain, which counted also sovereigns well-read men.

The other indications on the life of Marcabru are not very sure. Actually, one will never know nothing of his birth nor of his death, because we have nothing any more but 43 poems of him.

Work

Marcabru is one of the first troubadours whose texts reached us. First of all Jongleur it proves to be a very gifted Poète. He is the author of oldest the Pastourelle discovered, the autrier, with the issida of abriu .

Its poetry is remarkable: it is one of the precursors of the trobar clus (poetry closed, hermetic), which is opposed to the trobar leu (poetry light, easy to include/understand). It uses complex metaphors, plays on the rare rhymes, and uses the resources fully prosodic of the Occitan.

It seems to have been difficult, as shows it for example the following worms:

Macabrun, wire of Marcabrune was generated under such moon That it knows love under any habit Listen! Jamais it liked any no, Jamais none liked it.

Its style moralizer, misogynist, even misanthropist, have, seem to him it, as many assured partisans as of adversaries (which then perhaps decided to kill it). Its poems, or sirventès, often denounce the lasciviousness of the women and criticize the courtly love. He in addition likes to call on humble people.

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