Albertet, 'Donna pros e richa' (BdT 16.11)

This paper will provide a commentary and a new critical edition of “Donna pros e richa” by Albertet, a poem with an exceptional metrical structure, halfway between a ‘canso’ and an isostrophic ‘descort’. Its structure is identical to Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’ “Carros” (BdT 392.32): most likely Albertet’s poem is the original while “Truan, mala guerra” is a contrafactum, considering the fact that it is comparable to a sirventes. The lyric self urgently requests the love of a Genoese lady, complaining of her indifference and cursing her quite violently at the end of each stanza. The passionate tone that characterizes the poem becomes less so towards the end where God is finally called upon to protect the lady. What is clear here is, on the one hand, the poem’s conformity with the characteristics of the ‘mala canso’, and, on the other, its similarity with another poem by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, the ‘contrasto’ with the Genoese lady (BdT 392.7). Thus Albertet’s poem is curious from different points of view: for its metrical form, uncommon in a ‘canso’; for its linguistic register which ressembles that of narrative genres such as the ‘fabliaux’; for its rhymes which offer a series of analogies and exchanges of rhyme-words with the two Raimbauts, the previously mentioned Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and Raimbaut d’Aurenga.