Consistori de Barcelona - Poetic Content and Style

Poetic Content and Style

The isolation and their classicism of the Consistoris (of Toulouse and Barcelona) cut them off from the literary movements giving life to other vernaculars, such as the dolce stil novo and the Renaissance in Italian and the work of Ausias March associated with the zenith of medieval Catalan. Martín de Riquer is highly critical of the negative influence of the Toulousain academy on Catalan poetry through the exportation occitanisms and support of an outmoded literary language. For its thematically limited, narrow conception of art and imposing rules for form and content, he compares it to French neoclassicism and its "tyranny of the monotonous alexandrine". All these bad influences continued their negative effect from Barcelona, where the rhetorical style of Toulouse was copied. The picture of judges marking of "vices" in the margins of the poems submitted for competition is emblematic of the "tyranny" the rules held over creativity. In these respects the Consistori was much like a medieval university. It was also more bourgeois, being essentially created by citizens for citizens, with their tastes and their concerns in mind. The essential difference between the activities and the poetry of the Consistori and that of the earlier troubadorus is that the latter composed (originally) in a courtly environment and share courtly tastes and concerns. In this respect the movement mirrored that of the dolce stil novo in Italy, but it was less successful. The failure of the city of Barcelona to support the Consistori and its falling back on royal patronage in 1396 best exemplifies the problems of consciously continuing the troubadour tradition in an atmosphere that was not made for it.

Few poems have survived from the Consistori's contests, preserved in chansonniers with other troubadour songs. The Cançoner dels Masdovelles is one of the most important songbooks, yet only three songs can be connected to the Consistori de Barcelona with any certainty. Gilabert de Próxita wrote Le souvenirs qu'amors fina me porta, a secular song on love, in the manner of the troubadours. According to its forty-second line, it was presented al novell consistori (to the new consistory), probably the re-creation of Martin the Humane. Andreu Febrer composed Sobre.l pus naut element de tots quatre, an astrological and mythological panegyric for an unnamed queen of Sicily. It alludes to the cossistori, but this may be a reference to some competition held in Sicily. Another troubadour with surviving work presented at Barcelona is Guillem de Masdovelles, who also competed (and won) at Toulouse. His canso of love Pus li prat son de verdura guarnit was "coronada" (crowned) the winner at a contest in Barcelona. It is interesting to note that Guillem's work is written in an Occitan sprinkled with catalanisms and Andreu's in Catalan with occitanisms. Apparently, the language of the poetry presented at the Catalan consistori was not constant (besides being romance). Guillem's nephew, Joan Berenguer de Masdovelles, did translate his uncle's winning poem from llemoví (Occitan) into Catalan. Joan Berenguer's translations of his uncle's Occitan works demonstrates the conscious use of a literary idiom as opposed to the language of conversation and the consciously archaic nature of occitanisms in Catalan writing.