Cançó de Santa Fe
The Cançó (or Cançon) de Santa Fe (Occitan:
The place of its composition is controversial. It may have been written in the region around
The language or dialect of the poem is also debated, since on it hinge the nationalist pride of Catalonia and the thesis that Catalan and
The Cançó is a versified narration of the martyrdom of Saint Faith in Agen (c. 300).[8] It is primarily based on the now lost Latin Passio sanctorum Fidis et Caprisii, though seven Latin sources have been identified, including the De mortibus persecutorum of Lactantius.
Elisabeth Work divides it into two distinct parts: a conventional
According to the final lines of its , where the people can affirm its truth:
- Tota Basconn'et Aragons
- e l'encontrada delz gascons
- sabon qals es aqist canczons,
- o ss'es ben vera·sta razons...[6]
Editions
- Antoine Thomas, La chanson de Sainte Foi d'Agen: poème provençal du XIe siècle, 1974.
- French translation by Antoine Thomas on Wikisource
Notes
- ^ The French title comes from the latest edition of Antoine Thomas (Paris, 1925). Ernst Hoepffner and Prosper Alfaric offer La Chanson de sainte Foy for their 1926 edition.
- ^ The most popular division is Thomas' division into 49 laisses (see Work, p. 366; Riquer, p. 198).
- Martín de Riquer(1964), Història de la Literatura Catalana, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Edicions Ariel), p. 197–200.
- ^ For an overview of the content of the work and a thematic analysis, see Elisabeth P. Work (1983), "The Eleventh-Century Song of Saint Fides: An Experiment in Vernacular Eloquence", Romance Philology, 36:3, pp. 366–385.
- ^ a b c Riquer, p. 198 n1.
- ^ a b Riquer, p. 198.
- Urban T. Holmes and Maurice L. Radoff (1929), "Claude Fauchet and His Library", Publications of the Modern Language Association, 44:1, pp. 229–242. See p. 238 and note 39, where it is classified under "Miscellaneous". The compilers note that Fauchet claimed to have received the manuscript from Pierre Pithou. See also S. W. Bisson (1935), "Claude Fauchet's Manuscripts", The Modern Language Review, 30:3, pp. 311–323.
- Romance language, and the earliest piece of surviving Occitan literature, see the introduction of Robèrt Lafont, ed. and trans. (1998), "La Chanson de sainte Foi": Texte occitan du XIe siècle (Geneva: Droz).
- ^ Work, p. 366.