A ''razo'' (, literally "cause", "reason") was a short piece of

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

prose Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...

detailing the circumstances of a

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 ...

composition. A ''razo'' normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of a '' vida'' (a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and the boundary between the two genres was never sharp. In the ''

chansonnier A chansonnier (, , Galician and , or ''canzoniéro'', ) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally " song-books"; however, some manuscripts are call ...

s'', the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, some poems are accompanied by a prose explanation whose purpose is to give the reason why the poem was composed. These texts are occasionally based on independent sources. To that extent, they supplement the ''vidas'' in the same manuscripts and are useful to modern literary and historical researchers. Often, however, it is clear that assertions in the ''razos'' are simply deduced from literal readings of details in the poems. Most of the surviving ''razo'' corpus is the work of Uc de Saint Circ, composed in Italy between 1227 and 1230. In one case, a manuscript from

Bergamo Bergamo ( , ; ) is a city in the Alps, alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from the alpine lakes Lake Como, Como and Lake Iseo, Iseo and 70 km (43 mi) from Lake Garda, Garda and Lake ...

, there is an explanatory rubric preceding the Occitan

partimen The ''partimen'' (; ; also known as ''partia'' or ''joc partit'') is a cognate form of the French jeu-parti (plural ''jeux-partis''). It is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry composed between two troubadours, a subgenre of the ''tenso'' or ''cobla'' ...

''Si paradis et enfernz son aital'' by

Girard Cavalaz Girardo Cavallazzi or Cavallazzo ( or ; fl. 1225–1247) was an Italian troubadour from Lombardy. His only surviving work is four coblas of a ''partimen'' he exchanged with Aycart del Fossat concerning the nature of Heaven and Hell: ''Si para ...

and Aycart del Fossat is in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Sources

* * Boutière, Jean; Schutz, Alexander Herman. ''Biographies des troubadours: textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècle''. Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1964. * Poe, Elizabeth W
"At the Boundary between ''Vida'' and ''Razo'': The Biography of Raimon Jordan."
''Neophilologus'', 72:2 (Apr., 1988) pp. 316–319. * Schutz, A. H
"Where Were the Provençal ''Vidas'' and ''Razos'' Written?"
''Modern Philology'', 35:3 (Feb., 1938), pp. 225–232. {{refend

Sources

See also