L'amant, la dama i l'amor: evolució dels ideals cortesos a la lírica amorosa catalana dels segles XIV i XV

Abstract

The aim of this work is to challenge the traditionally held view of the image of the lady in medieval courtly lyric as either the summit of perfection or the source of all evil. Feminine images in courtly lyric have tended to be analysed in terms of a bipolar pattern represented by the wholly positive model of the bona domna in opposition to the entirely negative figure of the mala domna. It is argued in this thesis that praise and blame are not opposite trends in this kind of poetry, but different representations of the feminine arising from the interaction between the misogynist background of cultural tradition and the civilizing trends characteristic of courtly literature. As a result of the different degrees to which this interaction takes place, we find a variety of feminine images that makes redundant the conventional classification of women into the good and the bad. The scope of this work is Provençal troubadour lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well as love lyric written in Provençal and Catalan in the kingdom of Aragon over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The five chapters trace the evolution of the conventional topics of this lyric in relation to the changing social and economical conditions of the period. The concept of symbolic inversion of gender roles is applied to representations of the lady and the courtly lover, in order to identify the simultaneous presence of positive and negative elements in every text. The thesis aims to demonstrate that the multi-faceted, versatile image of the lady in this body of love lyric is to serve as a pretext for the production of courtly discourse, a source of social and intellectual prestige for poets. Detailed study of a representative selection of texts shows how deference for the lady, originally one of the signs of distinction defining courtly love lyric, is progressively displaced by other features of courtly discourse that grant distinction.