«Plazens plasers» and Other Fourteenth-Century Catalan Refrain Songs

Abstract

Catalan poets writing at the turn of the fourteenth century (e.g. Andreu Febrer, Gilabert de Pròixida, Jordi de Sant Jordi) were captivated by the work of Guillaume de Machaut, with its brilliant recodification of the formes fixes. Such fascination proved crucial to the establishment of trends in Catalan poetry which had emerged much earlier in French song. In particular, early Catalan poets demonstrated a proclivity for refrain songs. The process whereby such songs became standard in Catalan poetry included the fusion of strophic varieties of French origin with the genres inherited from the troubadours. It likewise comprised the adoption of a new style of phrasing intended to refashion the language employed by the Catalan poets, as well as the horizon of expectation of their public. Following the impact of Machaut’s works upon the Aragonese court, Catalan poetry embraced a new mode of expression which increased the syntactical resources used to enhance the emotive aspects of texts. This new “syntax of sentimentality”, wherein echoes of other literary traditions were assimilated into poetic text (e.g. the Dante of the Rime, the earliest readings of Petrarch’s Canzoniere), proved to be greatly appealing to the Catalan poets writing at the end of the fourteenth century.