- Pau de Bellviure
Pau de Bellviure was a Catalan poet of the fourteenth and/or fifteenth centuries. To the Catalan and Spanish writers of the
Renaissance he was a model ofcourtly love who had attained "gran fama" (great fame).Pere Torroella lists him among the "doctors" of poetry. According toAusiàs March , his love for his lady turned him mad and he broke his neck and died, a martyr to love."Pau de Bellviure" may be a surname, in which case his given name is unknown. In some manuscripts he is called Benviure, the name of a famous lineage. The castle of
Benviure was later absorbed by Eramprunyà, an estate of the March family. In his "Prohemio a carta ", theMarqués de Santillana begins survey of the history of Catalan verse withGuilhem de Berguedan and "Pao de Benbibre". There is mention of a Paül, son of Pere de Benviure, secretary toJohn I of Aragon , who died in 1417 without descendents, but this is probably not the poet. According toGuerau de Maçanet , Pau was a member of the nobleRocabertí orCabrera families.Only one complete poem, "Dompna gentil, vos m'enculpats a tort", survives despite Pau's subsequent fame. It is a discreet "
maldit " in which he attacks his lady for her infidelity. A fragment, "Per fembre fo Salamo enganat", of a lost poem by Pau is preserved in the "Conhort" ofFrancesc Ferrer . In this fragment Pau lists the names of famous men who were the victims of woman's lies:Solomon ,David ,Samson , Adam,Aristotle ,Virgil ,John the Baptist , andHippocrates . In both his extent pieces, Pau comes across asmisogynistic , but his light-hearted treatment of the subject and his use of irony assured his popularity. It is unknown whether he really died of love or it is a legend that merely arose from his reference to "la mort qui.m corre" (death that chases me) in "Dompna gentil".References
*Cabré, Lluís (1998) [http://narpan.net/documents/lluiscabre1.pdf "Notas sobre la memoria de Santillana y los poetas de la Corona de Aragón".] "‘Cancionero’: Studies in Honour of Ian Macpherson", ed. Alan Deyermond, pp. 25–38. Londres: Queen Maryand Westfield College.
*Riquer i Morera, Martí de (1964). "Història de la Literatura Catalana", vol. 1. Barcelona: Edicions Ariel.External links
* [http://www.rialc.unina.it/inc-bellviure.htm Incipitario de Pau de Bellviure] , with links to edited original-language texts of all his works
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