Gavaudan

Gavaudan (fl. c. 1195 – 1215, known in 1212–1213) was a troubadour and hired soldier (soudadier) at the courts of both Raymond V and Raymond VI of Toulouse and later on in Castile. He was from Gévaudan, as his name (probably a nickname) implies. He wrote moralising lyrics, either religious or political, and ten of his works survive, including five sirventes, two pastorelas, one canso, one planh for an anonymous domna (lady), and one Crusade song. He is sometimes clumped in a primitive Marcabrunian "school" of poetry alongside Bernart Marti, Bernart de Venzac, and Peire d'Alvernhe. He developed a hermetic style, combining elements of the trobar ric and trobar clus.

Gavaudan composed two pastorelas customarily dated to around 1200: Desamparatz, ses companho and L'autre dia, per un mati. They are one of the earliest and best examples of a subgenre of pastorela that, picking up on the themes of the earliest pastorelas, in which quaint shepherdesses were easily seduced by noble men, and those of Marcabru and his school, wherein the witty shepherdesses rebuff the oafish knights, intermingled the two earlier themes into one, in which the shepherdess and the knight fall in love. In Gavaudan, the knight and the shepherdess turn to each other in retreat from the dreariness of their normal lives and their love is true, but not courtly love.

Gavaudan perceived himself as an innovator, as his poem Ieu no sui pars als autres trobadors ("I am not like other troubadours") indicates. That poem is the "manifesto" of his poetry and in it he declares that his work is only meant to be clear als bos entendedors: "to good listeners (i.e. those who understand well)".

...
Wikipedia