Arazo(Old Occitan[raˈzu],literally "cause", "reason" ) was a short piece ofOccitanprosedetailing the circumstances of atroubadourcomposition. Arazonormally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of avida(a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and the boundary between the two genres was never sharp.
In thechansonniers,the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, some poems are accompanied by a prose explanation whose purpose is to give the reason why the poem was composed. These texts are occasionally based on independent sources. To that extent, they supplement thevidasin the same manuscripts and are useful to modern literary and historical researchers. Often, however, it is clear that assertions in therazosare simply deduced from literal readings of details in the poems. Most of the survivingrazocorpus is the work ofUc de Saint Circ,composed in Italy between 1227 and 1230.
In one case, a manuscript fromBergamo,there is an explanatory rubric preceding the OccitanpartimenSi paradis et enfernz son aitalbyGirard CavalazandAycart del Fossatis inLatin.
Sources
edit- Burgwinkle, William E. (2019) [1990].Razos and Troubadour Songs.London: Routledge.
- Boutière, Jean; Schutz, Alexander Herman.Biographies des troubadours: textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècle.Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1964.
- Poe, Elizabeth W."At the Boundary betweenVidaandRazo:The Biography of Raimon Jordan. "Neophilologus,72:2 (Apr., 1988) pp. 316–319.
- Schutz, A. H."Where Were the ProvençalVidasandRazosWritten? "Modern Philology,35:3 (Feb., 1938), pp. 225–232.
See also
edit- Linquo coax ranis,a Latin equivalent