"Na Maria, Pretz E Fina Valors": A New Argument for Female Authorship‪.‬

THE manuscript attribution of "Na Maria, pretz e fina valors" to Bietris de Roman has caused no small amount of controversy among critics, for even those who accept the attribution often struggle to account for what appears to be the sole Occitan canso, or courtly love lyric, written by one woman for another. The speaker in the poem praises "Lady Maria" for her beauty, nobility, and many other virtues; begs her to grant the speaker "so don plus ai d'aver gioi esperansa" (13), declares Maria to be the source of all her happiness and that "per vos vauc mantas ves sospiran" (16); and implores that she not love any "entendidor truan" (20). The poem's use of the love language characteristic of the canso has elicited a range of interpretations, from arguments that the poem is an expression of same-sex desire to outright denials of female authorship altogether. (2) Yet few have considered whether the poem might be participating in conventions that readily accommodate the language of desire within the exchange of political and social fidelity. While no reading of "Na Maria" can offer conclusive evidence of the sex of its author, the one I submit here offers another means by which to reconcile female authorship with a female object of courtly devotion. Many readers who accept the manuscript attribution conclude that the poem must represent one of the few, if not the only, extant examples of a medieval lesbian love song. Indeed, in the biographical notes that accompany her edition of trobairitz poetry, Meg Bogin comments wryly that "Scholars have resorted to the most ingenious arguments to avoid concluding that [Bietris] is a woman writing a love poem to another woman" (176). John Boswell cites "Na Maria" as one of the "few poems exemplifying this [gay artistic] tradition" that survive into the thirteenth century (265), and Pierre Bec surmises that, if "Na Maria" is in fact written by a woman, then "ce serait sans doute le seul poeme 'lesbien' de toute la lyrique Occitane" (198). The "if/then" nature of this argument is significant: for such readers, a lesbian author -- or at least speaker -- is the natural and logical conclusion, since a sexual relationship is taken for granted. Even those who acknowledge that we need not necessarily conflate the identities of poet and speaker still insist upon the poem's queer nature. Bec sees "Na Maria" as a "contre-text," a text that speaks against a culture's dominant ideology "en conformite avec un code litteraire donne mais aussi en rupture avec lui" (8). For Tilda Sankovitch, as well, the poem strains against normative boundaries, regardless of the actual likelihood of Bietris' lesbianism: