Turc Malec (also ''Turc Malet'', ''Truc Malet'', ''Truc Malec'') was a minor

troubadour A troubadour (, ; ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The tr ...

and

nobleman Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally appointed by and ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. T ...

, probably from

Quercy Quercy (; , locally ) is a former province of France located in the country's southwest, bounded on the north by Limousin, on the west by Périgord and Agenais, on the south by Gascony and Languedoc, and on the east by Rouergue and Auverg ...

. He wrote the ''

cobla esparsa A ''cobla esparsa'' ( literally meaning "scattered stanza") in Old Occitan is the name used for a single-stanza poem in troubadour poetry. They constitute about 15% of the troubadour output, and they are the dominant form among late (after 1220) a ...

'' ''En Raimon, be.us tenc a grat'', the first (but the order is unclear) in a series of four poems (the other three being ''

sirventes The ''sirventes'' or ''serventes'' (), sometimes translated as "service song", was a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry practiced by the troubadours. The name comes from ''sirvent'' ('serviceman'), from whose perspective the song is allegedly wr ...

''), constituting a debate with Raimon de Durfort (also from Quercy), and

Arnaut Daniel Arnaut Daniel (; floruit, fl. 1180–1200) was an Occitans, Occitan troubadour of the 12th century, praised by Dante Alighieri, Dante as "the best smith" (''miglior fabbro'') and called a "grand master of love" (''gran maestro d'amore'') by Petra ...

. All three ''sirventes'' were written in monorhyming stanzas of nine lines, the first two of seven syllables and the last seven of eight, mirroring the structure of Turc's single one. A ''

vida Vida means “life” in Spanish and Portuguese. It may refer to: Geography * Vida (Gradačac), village in Bosnia and Herzegovina * Lake Vida, Victoria Valley, Antarctica * U.S. settled places: ** Vida, Montana ** Vida, Oregon ** Vida, Missour ...

razo A ''razo'' (, literally "cause", "reason") was a short piece of Old Occitan, Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A ''razo'' normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it mi ...

'' was composed for Raimon and Turc, which goes like this:

''Raimons de Dufort e·N Turc Malec si foron du cavallier de Caersi que feiren los sirventes de la domna que ac nom ma donna n'Aia, aquella que dis al cavalier de Cornil qu'ella no l'amaria si el no la cornava el cul. Et aqui son escritz los sirventes.''

Raimon de Durfort and Lord Turc Malec were two knights from Quercy who composed the sirventes about the lady called Milady Aia, the one who said to the knight of Cornil ossibly Bernart de Cornil, but actually a play on ''cornar'', "to sound a horn"that she would not love him if he did not blow in her arse. And here are written the ''sirventes''.

In the poem, however, Aia (who is referred to as "Ena" in the pieces) does not ask to be "blown" in the ''cul'' (arse) but in the ''corn'' (literally "horn"). This may be a reference to the anal sphincter (which can make

noise Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrat ...

like a horn) or to the clitoris. Although Ugo Angelo Canello proposed in 1883 that the ''vida'' contains a concealed reference to homosexual sex (taking ''cornava'' for "sodomised"),

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...

;

Daniel Heller-Roazen Daniel Heller-Roazen is the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is one of the translators into English of work by Giorgio Agamben. He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Scien ...

, trans. (1999). ''The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics'' (Stanford University Press), 23–26. today scholars believe it is either referring to typical vaginal sex or, insultingly, to oral stimulation of the anus; most scholars assume the latter.

Notes

Sources

Bibliografia Elettronica dei Trovatori, v. 2.0

External links

Truc Malec's extant coblaRaimon de Durfort's works
{{authority control French troubadours Writing duos People from Tarn-et-Garonne