CHAPTER III [22]


TECHNIQUE

Provençal literature contains examples of almost every poetical _genre_.
Epic poetry is represented by Girart of Roussillon,[12] a story of long
struggles between Charles Martel and one of his barons, by the Roman de
Jaufre, the adventures of a knight of the Round Table, by Flamenca, a
love story which provides an admirable picture of the manners and
customs of the time, and by other fragments and _novelas_ or shorter
stories in the same style. Didactic poetry includes historical works
such as the poem of the Albigeois crusade, ethical or moralising
_ensenhamens_ and religious poetry. But the dominating element in
Provençal literature is lyrical, and during the short classical age of
this literature lyric poetry was supreme. Nearly five hundred different
troubadours are known to us at least by name and almost a thousand
different stanza forms have been enumerated. While examples of the fine
careless rapture of inspiration are by no means wanting, artificiality
reigns supreme in the majority of cases. Questions of technique receive
the most sedulous attention, and the principles of stanza construction,
rime correspondence and rime distribution, as evolved by the [23]
troubadours, exerted so wide an influence upon other European literature
that they deserve a chapter to themselves.

There was no formal school for poetical training during the best period
of Provençal lyric. When, for instance, Giraut de Bornelli is said to
have gone to "school" during the winter seasons, nothing more is meant
than the pursuit of the trivium and quadrivium, the seven arts, which
formed the usual subjects of instruction. A troubadour learned the