Marcabru

Marcabru ( in French literary histories and encyclopedias usually: Marcabrun ) was a French author altokzitanischer language in the first half of the 12th century. He is one of the oldest known troubadour. His work is with a good 40 -attributable or attributed to him lyrics, including four with scores relatively well preserved.

Life and work

About his life nothing specific data is known. The two altokzitanischen short biographies ( vidas ) that are obtained over him, seem to have developed from certain of his poems, that they are not historically based and soft moreover widely. He would, according to the shorter of the two, son of a poor Gascognerin called Marca Bruna ( " brown [ liver ?] Spot" ) was, and to speak ill of women and love. According to the other, more detailed, it would be designated as the foundling a rich man named Aldric del Vilar before the door, raised under the name of "Pan perdut " (lost bread) from him, and was informed of the minstrel and troubadour Cercamon in densities and composition. Later, he had the name Marcabru adopted under which he was known. He was finally killed by the Count of Gascony, of which he had said many bad things.

Something profound than those referred to Vidas are the hypotheses which has established the modern philology of scattered information and hints in his texts as well as from other evidence. Thereafter Marcabru would probably come in fact from Gascony and come from a humble background. In the 1130er years he was at first apparently in relation to the court of Count William X of Aquitaine (son of the first troubadours ), who resided mainly in Poitiers. 1137 he could be the daughter of William, Eleanor, be followed to Paris when she married the French king Louis VII. Clearly he remained there but not for long, but went to northern Spain, where he joined Alfonso VII of León and Castile, the ruler of one of the local small kingdoms that were preparing to activate the Reconquista, ie the reconquest of the Arab- Islamic -dominated parts of Spain. For the court of Alfonso, he wrote ( Occitan was well understood by his audience enough) in the 1140s, political poetry, in which he called for the participation in that Spanish domestic crusade, which he called a " laundry room " ( Lavador ), the souls of the as well as clean a crusade to the Holy Land.

Overall Marcabru was obviously not uneducated, and he worked in almost every lyric genres of the time. Although acknowledged as the author of his contemporaries thoroughly, he was apparently as difficult person and enjoyed playing the role of the critic and satirist of the example the "wrong", only the pleasure serving love of the noble lords and ladies also denounced or denounced the hypocrisy of church people.

Marcabru is still significant as the author of the oldest known Pastourelle and above all as one of the creators of the hermetic seal willed style of the so-called " trobar clus " ( sealed densities ), which came into fashion after him.