For years, scholars of medieval Occitan (Old Provençal to some) have known of the corpus of debate poems that exists in that language. Until now, there has been no single collection of these many works in Occitan (the parallel works in Old French were edited by A. Långfors and L. Brandin, Recueil général des jeux partis français in 1926). Scholars were obliged to consult editions of individual troubadours, sometimes dealing with editions that were no longer considered to be of great scholarly merit. A few researchers had access to the only single collection, B. Bonnarel's Las 194 cançons dialogadas dels trobadors (Paris, 1981), but this volume did not offer full critical editions of the included texts and had other problems as well. These issues are now solved, magnificently, with this three-volume edition by Harvey and Paterson of The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens.
The editors' work reflects remarkable collaboration, for the massive project was begun by British scholar John Marshall in the 1980's. He abandoned it for health reasons in 1989 and offered his notes to Harvey and Paterson in 1999. These two then completed the task Marshall had begun, the edition of 157 texts, calling on colleagues across the world for various forms of assistance. Note that this work has been at least thirty years in the making.
Troubadours knew of at least two different kinds of debate poems, the tenso and the partimen. In each, two or more poets discuss, usually in alternating stanzas, a specific topic. The difference between the two genres is that in the partimen, the first speaker presents an "either/or" situation: "Who has more pleasure: a lover who lies all night with his lady without making love to her, or one who goes to see and talk to his lady and only has time for one go before leaving?" (PC 366.17), whereas the tenso does not have this formal opening structure (xix)--this definition is taken from the fourteenth-century Leys d'amors, an authoritative Occitan poetry manual. Harvey and Paterson include all debates between "two living, human participants" (xix), excluding dialogues involving an anonymous speaker (xxi). The editors suggest that others are welcome to supplement their work by editing the debates not included here, such as fictive debates between a troubadour and God, or dialogues involving anonymous ladies (xxi). The editors also invite scholars to consider in depth the definitions of dialogue pieces in the Occitan corpus and/or to produce "detailed studies of the dating of the pieces" (xxi n.). Though Harvey and Paterson replace Bonnarel in many respects, his work still remains useful for his inclusion of these fictive debates.
These poems offer us a overview of medieval concerns; some are serious, others much less so. Is the debate really about whether it is better to be jealous or have your wife be jealous (PC 140.1b) or about the skill of the composers, in this case Enric II and Guillen de Mur, to write poetry that could address that question? I argue for the latter. Harvey and Paterson offer a table that lists the themes of these debates: courting, sex, marriage, reputation, troubadour life, personal questions, reciprocal insults, wealth, knowledge, knightly prowess, religion, politics, philosophical subjects and miscellaneous (xxxii-xxxix). The two scholars recognize that these topics have much overlap (consider PC 97.4, "Which is preferable: sex in secret or the sole pretence of it for the sake of reputation?" Is the topic sex or reputation?--both, in truth); nonetheless, the differing topics give a sense of the compass of topics.
A second table gives the distribution of lyrics by region, a fascinating data set. Arranged by region and then in chronological order, the reader can get a clear sense of where debates were composed. Such a listing allows the scholar to see where centers of composition existed, and one can see how the genre traveled: consider the two texts composed in Greece (PC 252.1 and 392.29), in both cases by troubadour participants in the Fourth Crusade. This table allows us to see where centers of interest in troubadour composition and performance existed (it is generally assumed that debate poems such as these were performed for an audience at court). The same table also summarizes the degrees of originality of each song (an original verse form, a form imitated by others, a form modeled partly or entirely on another piece) (xl). This data allows us to see at a glance how many of these debates aligned with another Occitan verse form, the sirventes, which borrowed either verse form or music from an earlier composition.
The editors offer a concise introduction for a target audience of specialists. There is no general introduction that would ease the way for a newcomer to the field of medieval Occitan literature. Consider the way the three volumes are arranged. The organizing scheme of the volumes is by the number assigned to troubadours and their lyrics by German scholars Pillet and Carstens, known familiarly as a PC number (in Italy, BdT replaces the siglum PC, but the numbers are the same). PC numbers identify the troubadour (the first numeral) and the poem in his oeuvre (the second numeral). There is only one PC number assigned to any given song in the troubadour corpus, so that identification by this number eliminates confusion. The songs are printed in PC number order (which also means, in alphabetical order by name of poet), organized by the first speaker in each debate. The merit of this method is that it groups together all songs begun by the same author; the disadvantage is that when that author was the second speaker, the poem is found under another troubadour's PC number, though the cross-reference is always provided (e.g. PC 70.32=366.23 for a tenso between Bernart and Peirol). Running headers of PC numbers throughout allow readers to find a given lyric fairly quickly. The one issue with this legitimate reliance on PC numbers is that it tends to obliterate the names of the authors of these works (the running headers are PC numbers only). While scholars in the field know many PC numbers by heart, newcomers will want to use the Table of Contents (only in volume 1) attentively to find the name that goes with a given number.
The editors carefully attended to issues of lay out, so that each song is presented in the same format. We are given, as expected, the list of manuscripts, the rubrics, previous diplomatic editions, previous critical editions, stanza order and analysis of that order; an analysis of the manuscripts to explain editorial decisions and selection of the base manuscript. Each poem is then printed in Occitan with facing-page English translation, manuscript variants at the foot of the page. A description and discussion of the poem's versification, consideration of attribution, and explanatory notes follow the text and translation. It is clear that Harvey and Paterson took their charge as critical editors very seriously. I applaud them, moreover, for they surely had to fight the press to achieve this uniformity of presentation, at the cost of added blank pages in the volumes.
The three volumes are completed by an enormous bibliography and by a glossary that discusses some of the vocabulary. Given the facing-page translations, there was probably need for a more detailed glossary. There is also an Index of Proper Names; the reader is invited to check the relevant poems for details on each individual.
My issues with this edition are really very few. Given that troubadour debate poems are found in multiple medieval songbooks, I would have liked to have seen a more complete chart showing the distribution of these dialogues by manuscript. The chart presented on page xx may be incomplete, omitting troubadour manuscripts W and f. Another problem for the neophyte, the manuscripts are identified only by their sigla, not by city, library or call number. Occitan scholars know their sigla; students will have to learn the hard way. More significantly, for the very few relevant examples (see PC 242.69 and 323.4), the extant music is not included. Given current interest in the relationship between music and text in Occitan lyric, this omission is significant. It may be, however, that we should blame the press rather than the editors on this score.
Harvey and Paterson deserve tremendous praise and the thanks of Occitan scholars worldwide for this important contribution to the discipline. That their edition asks more of the student than is often the case may be a plus, not a minus. Their work allows scholars ready access to a large and defined corpus, providing stellar examples of Occitan philology that will surely stand the test of time.