The Rustic Troubadours

This chapter reflects on a corpus, which can be called Occitanizing lyric, that might appear to contradict this book's thesis regarding the assimilation of Occitan lyric in francophone space. The pieces examined here are generally thought to have been composed by native French speakers but made to look and sound Occitan through phonological coloring. Although this phenomenon—which makes French pieces look more like Occitan rather than Occitan pieces look more like French—would seem to work against the francophone trend toward assimilation, it occurs primarily in a lower register. Thus, while the prestigious genre of the Occitan canso or grand chant came to look increasingly French, low-register forms such as the dance song and pastourelle came to look increasingly Occitan. While the high-register cansos of the troubadours have effectively been transformed into French texts, songs of a lower register are passed off as Occitan, so that French is associated with the most refined cultural productions and Occitan with those that are rustic and unsophisticated. The latter repertoire, faux-archaic Occitanizing song, served as a factitious mirage of origins.