Razo

A "razó" or "razo" was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour 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 concrete.

The word "razó" means "reason" in Occitan. In the "chansonniers", 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 "razós" are simply deduced from literal readings of details in the poems. Most of the surviving "razó" corpus is the work of Uc de Saint Circ, composed in Italy between 1227 and 1230.

There is a complete collection of "razos", with French translation and commentary, by Boutière and Schutz.

Biographical explications of poems are not unknown in other literatures. For a Latin example contemporary with the earliest "razós" see Linquo coax ranis. In a manuscript from Bergamo there is an explanatory Latin rubric preceding the Occitan partimen "Si paradis et enfernz son aital" by Girard Cavalaz and Aycart del Fossat.

ources

*Poe, Elizabeth W. [http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pao-us:&rft_dat=xri:pao:article:5262-1988-072-02-000016 "At the Boundary between Vida and Razo: The Biography of Raimon Jordan."] "Neophilologus", 72:2 (Apr., 1988) pp. 316–319.
*Schutz, A. H. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-8232%28193802%2935%3A3%3C225%3AWWTP%22A%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R "Where Were the Provençal "Vidas" and "Razos" Written?"] "Modern Philology", 35:3 (Feb., 1938), pp. 225–232.