Watriquet Brassenel de Couvin

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Watriquet Brassenel de Couvin (* before 1300) was a 14th century French poet best known as the author of Fatras .

Watriquet came from Couvin in the Belgian province of Namur , but lived mainly in France. He was a poet at the court of Count Guy de Blois and for a time served Gaucher de Castillon, a local dignitary.

He is known as the author of 30 Fatras, parodistic nonsense poems with 13 verses. In a medieval manuscript it is noted that Watriquet and an otherwise unknown poet named Raimmondin fought a competition on Easter day before "King Philip of France". It should be about Philip VI. who ruled from 1328 to 1350. The fact that the poets' contest was held on Easter day has to do with the medieval customs around the Risus paschalis , the " Easter laugh ", which even allowed rough jokes in the church on Easter day. And the fact that the contest was held before the French king shows the contemporary importance of Watriquet.

An example from the Fatras Watriquets:

Doucement me reconforte
Celle qui mon cuer a price.
Doucement me reconforte
Une chate a moitié morte
Qui chante touz les jeudis
Une alleluye si forte,
Que li clichés de nos porte
Dist que siens est li lendis;
S'en fu uns loup si hardis
Qu'il ala maugré sa variety
Tuer Dieu en paradis
Et dist: - «Compains, je t'apporte
Celle qui mon cuer a price. »
Gently gives me consolation
the one to whom my heart succumbed.
Gently gives me consolation
a dead cat,
every Thursday
"Alleluja!" Shouts that almost
the handle of our door
thinks that you would be Monday
that a wolf dares
not with lust and greed
Slay God in paradise,
says, “I bring, brother, here
the one to whom my heart succumbed. "
A.
B.
A.
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B.

He was born shortly before the end of the 13th century and was active around 1325. The year of his death is unknown.

literature

  • Ralph Dutli : Fatrasia. Absurd poetry of the Middle Ages . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010
  • Maria Cojan Negulescu: Les fatras de Watriquet: parodie ou exercice poétique? In: Sylvie Mougin, Marie-Geneviève Grossel: Poésie et rhetorique du non-sens. Littérature médiévale, littérature oral. Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2004, pp. 89–116
  • Patrice Uhl: La constellation poétique du non-sens au moyen age. Onze études sur la poésie fatrasique et ses environs. Editions L'Harmattan, Paris 1999. Therein:
    • Les refrains des fastras du recueil de Watriquet et Raimondin étaient-ils chantés? Pp. 145-154
    • The "structures génératives" de la strophe dans les Fatras de Watriquet. Pp. 155-161

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bibliothèque nationale de France , f. fr. 14968, 162r to 169r
  2. ↑ Dutli: Fatrasien 2010, p. 125
  3. ^ French text from Dutli: Fatrasien 2010, p. 79. Translation based on Dutli's literal, inconsistent translation.
personal data
SURNAME Couvin, Watriquet Brassenel de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French poet
DATE OF BIRTH before 1300
DATE OF DEATH 14th Century