ABSTRACT
Bernart de Ventadorn is usually considered The Master Singer. A mixture of tone and gestures is an integral part of Bernart’s method, for he developed the Provencal canso into a sophisticated form that was capable of many sudden turns. The Provencal lyric bursts upon the late medieval world like a welcomed ray of spring sunlight. The first known poet is Duke William IX of Aquitaine, grandfather of the famous Eleanor and lord of most of south-western France. William establishes many of the rhetorical patterns which recur in later compositions. He plays with sacred allusions in a way that makes his poems sound every bit as “churchly” in their overtones as courtly. William’s tampering with Christian mysticism can best be seen in his famous Riddle Poem, where religious mysteries are transferred to secular paradox. William’s stanzas, rhyme schemes, and rhetoric can all be related to Latin rhetoric amd Christian hymnology, especially in his pilfering of the touchstone word “joy.”
