Matfre Ermengau

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Jean-Antoine Injalbert, Plateau des Poètes (Béziers
)

Matfre Ermengau

master of laws (senhor de leis) degree.[1]

He wrote one

codices and as many fragments. It was translated into Castilian and the Limousin dialect (once thought to be Catalan or catalanisant Occitan).[3] Matfre also says that he would have written better in Latin (from which he borrowed the word breviari
, from breviarium, not found elsewhere in medieval Occitan).

The work begins with popular

hagiographies.[4]

The last section (8,000 lines) of the work, "Perilhos tractatz d'amor de donas, seguon qu'en han tractat li antic trobador en lurs cansos", structured as a dialogue between the defenders Love and her critics, is filled with citations (266 by some counts) of other troubadours and even some

rhyming couplets: Fraires Matfre a sa cara seror. In it he explains the symbolism of a Christmas capon
.

Matfre has been credited, along with

Arthurian romance
(c.1340).

Notes

  1. ^ Alternative spellings of his names include "Maffre" and "Ermengaud".

References

  1. ^ Sarah Kay, "Grafting the knowledge community: The purposes of verse in the Breviari d'amor of Matfre Ermengaud", Neophilologus, 91:3 (2007), p. 362 and n3, notes that scholars are unsure whether Matfre became a friar before or after composing the Breviari. Paul Meyer, "Matfré Ermengaud de Béziers, troubadour", Histoire littéraire de la France, 32, Suite de quatorzième siècle (Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1898), pp. 15–56, is the first full treatment of Matfre's life.
  2. ^ Kay, p. 362, calls the Breviari "one of the most ambitious vernacular encyclopaedias of the Middle Ages", noting that it is remarkable that it is in verse.
  3. ^ a b c William D. Paden, "Review of Le Breviari d'Amor de Matfre Ermengaud, ed. Peter T. Ricketts", Romance Philology, 37:1 (1983:Aug.), p. 109.
  4. ^ Amelia Van Vleck, "Matfre Ermengaud", Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn, edd. (Routledge, 1995), p. 601.
  5. ^ For a thorough treatment of Matfre's citation practices, see Francesca M. Nicholson, "Branches of knowledge: The purposes of citation in the Breviari d'amor of Matfre Ermengaud", Neophilologus, 91:3 (2007), pp. 375–85.
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