4 - Performance

Summary

So far the songs discussed have been regarded as ‘texts’, the troubadours as ‘poets’. The purpose of this chapter is to reconsider this approach. Troubadour songs were not intended for reading as we read them now; in the context of live performance the song is less a text than an act that associates the performer with his audience. The role of the performer, and that of the listeners, are in large measure created by the songs, but they also possess an extra-textual reality. The domna may well be a rhetorical fiction, but named patrons and other members of the audience are often identifiable historical figures, whose political circumstances may be explicitly alluded to. Similarly, the performer, by his physical presence, and through the activity of singing, coupled possibly with gestures and mime, provides a visible and social presence that serves to anchor the song to the actual, at least for the duration of performance. The present chapter considers how this bodily presence, and this interaction, contribute to the ‘subjectivity’ of the songs. How does the first-person position relate to the gesturing, singing body of the performer? How does it engage with the experience and expectations of the audience?

Writing, orality, and witness

Recent scholarly interest in oral and written cultures suggests the different investment, in the two media, of subjectivity.