Od paraklausithyronu do serenady, grant no. 2012/07/B/HS2/01297, National Science Centre (NCN), Poland

Traditional and Courtly Alba: A Selection of Romance Lyrics Translated by Magdalena Pabisiak. A selection of mediaeval Romance lyrics complementing the two previous studies published in this issue of Terminus. It presents the first Polish translations of a number of works classified as traditional and courtly albas. The translations were made from five mediaeval Romance languages and Latin. The works whose authors are known are provided with a biographical note. Additionally, a historical and literary perspective for the presented collection is outlined. It also discusses some terms of fin' amor poetry that are difficult in translation. A comprehensive introduction gives information on the intentions of the authors of this collection, the translation technique developed here, and the specifics of translating Romance lyric into Polish. The three troubadour albas (Rimbaut de Vaqueiras, Cadenet, Uc de Bacalaria) examined here illustrate the translation strategies developed by Magdalena Pabisiak, presenting different variants of the translated text and criteria for making particular choices in the translation. Difficulties related to recreating the metric system of Romance lyric in a language with different prosody, syntactic structures, length of words, and vowel frequency are discussed, showing, inter alia, how difficult it is to obtain in Polish the same repeatability of rhymes so characteristic for this type of lyric. 

The Courtly Alba of Troubadours (Parting at Dawn) The second in the series of studies devoted to the genre of love songs, which combines the motif of lovers parting or meeting at dawn, presents the most canonical form of the genre, i.e. the courtly alba of the Occitan (Provencal) troubadours. Chapter 1. Courtly alba (knightly, learned, aristocratic) presents the definition of the genre according mainly to Elizabeth Wilson Poe. It then introduces a classification of the varieties of the genre following Christopher Chaguinian’s critical edition (alba de séparation, alba formelle érotique, alba religieux) enriched by the division into two types of mixed albas (presented in the previous paper) that are on the borderline of courtly and traditional forms. Additionally, following Toribio Fuente Cornejo, the collection of Occitan albas is supplemented with French and Galician-Portuguese examples, all created between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 14th century. Chapter 2.1. Traditional alba versus knightly guard song presents—following Chaguinian—a falsification of Alfred Jeanroy’s hypothesis that assumes the existence of an intermediate link between two preserved Latin guard songs from the 10th and 11th centuries and the troubadour alba, indicating the latter’s origin in the traditional form. This hypothesis is corroborated by the oldest definition of the genre in the treatise Doctrina de compondre dictats. Chapter 2.3. The Arabic hypothesis presents the motif of ibtakara (the parting of co-nomadising peoples or the morning parting of lovers from two different peoples), often referred to in Andalusian courtly poetry. The example of Ibn Zaydūn’s qaṣīda (10th/11th century) shows motifs that are intrinsic to the troubadour alba. Chapter 3. Types of Occitan amorous alba. Analysis of texts presents the further varieties of the genre: 3.1. Alba de sépartion (example—Rimbaut de Vaqueiras, Gaita be), 3.1.1. Alba de sépartion, type: a courtly version of chanson de malmariée (Cadenet, S’anc fui belha), 3.2. Alba formelle érotique (Uc de Bacalaria Per grazir).