ABSTRACT
The voices of the trobairitz are fresh, direct, intimate, and personal. They want love and don’t mind asking for it. The trobairitz had a choice of the following poetic genres: canso, tenso, partimen or joc parti, sirventes, alba, pastorela, and planh. Yet the surviving songs of the trobairitz are cansos and tensos, except for the sirventes of Gormonda of Montpellier, with its excited reiteration of the word “Roma.” According to her vida, “Lady Azalais came from the region of Montpellier, a noble and educated lady. The only one of the trobairitz to open with a prelude to Nature, Azalais links winter’s barrenness and the seasonal cold to her own grief, much as male troubadours liked to do. The most conspicuous place reference in Azalais’s poem is to the neighboring city of Orange, renowned for its poetic connections to the historic conqueror William of Orange.
