Dalfin d'Alvergne: edizione critica e commento

Eleven poems in old Occitan attributed to the lord and troubadour Dalfin d’Alvergne (…1167-1235), Count of Clermont and Montferrand, have been passed down to us. They are: two political sirventes, directed to Richard the Lionheart (BEdT 119.8) and to Robert, bishop of Clermont (119.9); two sirventes joglarescs (119.3 and 119.7); three partimens discussing matters of love, two with Peirol (119.2 and 366.30) and one with Perdigon (119.6); an exchange of sirventes with the theme of a partimen with Baussan (448.1a-119.1-448.1); three coblas, against Peire Pelissier (119.1a), Bertran de la Tor (119.5) and, again, against Robert bishop of Clermont (119.4). Dalfin d’Alvergne participated actively in the political events of his time. In particular, he took part in the wars between the kings of France and of England, and to local conflicts connected to those international hostilities. Several archival documents about this lord are preserved, which allow us to reconstruct and study his life. Dalfin’s life is strictly connected to his poetry, being its cause and catalyzer. The main characteristic of his poetry is its dialogical nature. His court, whose center was Montferrand, was one of the most important gathering points and places of production for the troubadours between the end of the XII and the beginning of the XIII century. It drew poets like Peirol, Perdigon, Gaucelm Faidit, Giraut de Borneil, Guiraudo lo Ros, Uc de la Bacalaria, Uc de Saint Circ. It had a fundamental role in the creation and in the diffusion of the genre of the partimen. As a patron, Dalfin d’Alvergne is often praised by the poets with whom he had connections, as a master, teacher and protector of the courtly values, and as an expert in love and poetry. This image propagates out of the limits of his countship. It found its apogee in the nova Abril issi’e mays intrava by the Catalan poet Raimon Vidal de Besalú, and reaches vastly different environments, allowing him to be a character in two Latin exampla by the Dominican Étienne de Bourbon. Dalfin is a capable poet. He discusses various topics, from satire against jongleurs to the debate on the preeminence of nobility of blood or of heart (supporting the latter). Dalfin is proficient with words and metrics, and many times he opts for original and interesting solutions. Particularly notable from this point of view are the two sirventes joglarescs, which use difficult and uncommon rhymes and are rich of infrequent terms pertaining to low and day-to-day language, oftentimes hapax. Despite the several points of interest, Dalfin’s figure and works have been quite neglected by the scholars. To date, there is no complete edition of his poems, except for E. M. Brackney’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis, A critical edition of the poems of Dalfin d’Alvernhe, University of Minnesota, 1936. For this reason, a new edition of the troubadour-Lord was necessary. The present edition of the texts is based on the direct reading of the manuscripts and on an attentive exam of the whole tradition, both from the point of view of the internal and external critique. Every text is opened by an introduction containing indication of the codices and of the previous editions, metrical information, a discussion of the tradition and an analysis of the content and the form of each poem. The texts are accompanied by a double apparatus (for variants of content and of form), by an Italian translation and by notes that are philological, linguistic, or related to the content. A glossary closes the edition.