Fairytale or Vidas?

The vidas of Bernart de Ventadour reads almost as a novella. The fairytale-like plot and drama of de Ventadour’s life lends a performativity that transcends the sparse factual format of the prose. Even though the events are written, as Gaunt and Kay explain, as “biographical and geographical data to produce and inculcate a form of cultural memory”, there is most definitely a storytellers intent behind the world. For instance it is written that Bernart “was a son of a servant who was a baker, and who heated the oven to bake the bread of the castle”. De Ventadour’s actions are described in an almost romanticized way, envisioning a poor boy providing for the castle he would eventually perform in. The facts of the story are all aspects of common fairy-tales, the poor boy transcending his low-birth and raised up by a patron. Then the real scandal and drama of the story occurs when it is revealed that de Ventadour’s patron’s wife “grew fond of Bernart and of his songs, and fell in love with him.” This is not factual writing. There is a performativity in the purposeful suspense in the narrating of events. The Viscounts wife is first introduced as “young, noble and lively”, and her falling in love is slowly revealed as the punctuation goes from comma to comma. The “cultural memory” therefore is narrated in a way that allows the reader to become a part of the story, as the drama is not hidden beneath scholastic language. The “aristocratic legitimacy”, that Gaunt and Kay mention, is also highlighted here as the vidas makes it clear that “their love lasted a long time before the viscount or other people became aware of it.” This lends credence and legitimacy to de Ventadour’s songs, as there is factual prose written about his fin amour. The status and drama of engaging in romantic advances with the most forbidden woman - that of his own patron - is prominently narrated in the vidas. The fairy-tale comparison continues in the Viscount’s wife’s fate. She is “locked up and guarded” much like a princess in a tower, whereas de Ventadour is free to leave and engage in another fin amour. The manuscript performativity comes in the dramatic structuring of a story told like a fiction, but presented as fact. Gaunt and Kay put it well, when they explain that it is “at once foundational, nostalgic and self-serving”.