A “Game of Words”: Why were “Insult tensos” Performed in Occitan Courts?
By Mavis Fèvre
Neophilologus, Volume 94, Issue 2 (2010)
Abstract: What was the purpose of insulting, aggressive exchanges between nobles and joglars/troubadours in the Occitan courts? Why should nobles have allowed themselves to be reviled by their social inferiors and then appear to demean themselves by answering their opponent? There are many early examples of personal public attacks in theatrical conditions, dating at least from Greek times. Several possible reasons are suggested in regard to these Occitan tensos and four works are examined in order to elucidate the problem. Some study has been made of the social and economic status of the nobles and how they may have been viewed by their contemporaries at the time these tensos were performed to determine whether there was a political or social purpose to these exchanges.
There are a number of Occitan tensos between nobles and joglar/troubadours which are of a very insulting nature with seemingly aggressive exchanges. Why should lords have allowed themselves to be insulted in the courts by their social inferiors and then appear to demean themselves by answering their opponent? There are several possible explanations.
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First, as argued by Jeanroy the very genre of the tenso probably arose from the joglars’ habit of exchanging dramatic, humorous verses of a satirical nature or which appear to ridicule the opponent in front of the public in order to draw a crowd to their performance. Therefore the joglars themselves probably had a tradition of hostile, defamatory exchanges, which could in part explain their willingness to use the same tactics in front of a courtly audience. Jeanroy also considered that exchanges of sirventes influenced the development of the genre: the sirventes were generally personal attacks on someone named or a comment or satire on current events, personal sirventes usually taking the form of a list of insults. Such sirventes would sometimes provoke a response, especially if the person addressed was himself a composer of verses. This aspect of comedy is very ancient, since ‘the characters of many extant Greek comedies indulge in liberal and often obscene abuse both of each other and of real contemporaries. Aristotle took it for granted that comic poets would use slanderous and indecent language’. It is likely that insulting tensos represented an acceptable form of humour to their contemporaries. Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de la Feuillée, first performed in 1276 in Arras, is a French example of medieval theatrical satire of members of a contemporary group, although, unlike the Occitan tensos, it is situated in local, urban, bourgeois society. It is assumed that the characters represented in Le Jeu were present at its performance and that they accepted seeing themselves lampooned in front of the townspeople – it is even considered possible that they played their own parts. Therefore comic satirical performances directed at members of the audience or at those on stage were not unknown in Europe at the time of the tensos.
By Mavis Fèvre
Neophilologus, Volume 94, Issue 2 (2010)
Abstract: What was the purpose of insulting, aggressive exchanges between nobles and joglars/troubadours in the Occitan courts? Why should nobles have allowed themselves to be reviled by their social inferiors and then appear to demean themselves by answering their opponent? There are many early examples of personal public attacks in theatrical conditions, dating at least from Greek times. Several possible reasons are suggested in regard to these Occitan tensos and four works are examined in order to elucidate the problem. Some study has been made of the social and economic status of the nobles and how they may have been viewed by their contemporaries at the time these tensos were performed to determine whether there was a political or social purpose to these exchanges.
There are a number of Occitan tensos between nobles and joglar/troubadours which are of a very insulting nature with seemingly aggressive exchanges. Why should lords have allowed themselves to be insulted in the courts by their social inferiors and then appear to demean themselves by answering their opponent? There are several possible explanations.
First, as argued by Jeanroy the very genre of the tenso probably arose from the joglars’ habit of exchanging dramatic, humorous verses of a satirical nature or which appear to ridicule the opponent in front of the public in order to draw a crowd to their performance. Therefore the joglars themselves probably had a tradition of hostile, defamatory exchanges, which could in part explain their willingness to use the same tactics in front of a courtly audience. Jeanroy also considered that exchanges of sirventes influenced the development of the genre: the sirventes were generally personal attacks on someone named or a comment or satire on current events, personal sirventes usually taking the form of a list of insults. Such sirventes would sometimes provoke a response, especially if the person addressed was himself a composer of verses. This aspect of comedy is very ancient, since ‘the characters of many extant Greek comedies indulge in liberal and often obscene abuse both of each other and of real contemporaries. Aristotle took it for granted that comic poets would use slanderous and indecent language’. It is likely that insulting tensos represented an acceptable form of humour to their contemporaries. Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de la Feuillée, first performed in 1276 in Arras, is a French example of medieval theatrical satire of members of a contemporary group, although, unlike the Occitan tensos, it is situated in local, urban, bourgeois society. It is assumed that the characters represented in Le Jeu were present at its performance and that they accepted seeing themselves lampooned in front of the townspeople – it is even considered possible that they played their own parts. Therefore comic satirical performances directed at members of the audience or at those on stage were not unknown in Europe at the time of the tensos.
Click here to read this article from Trinity College Dublin
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