Paraphrase

Peire d’Alvernhe opens by announcing that he is going to “sing about the singers” themselves — not to praise them, but to mock them. He says the troubadour world has become crowded with performers using every possible style and affectation, while even the least talented among them imagine themselves elegant and sophisticated. Many people now meddle in poetry and courtly song without any real understanding of what they are doing, like shepherds wandering around without knowing whether they are climbing upward or downward.

He first attacks Peire Rogier, accusing him of helping create this decline because he has turned to fashionable love poetry. Peire suggests Rogier would be better suited to church work — holding candles or reading psalms — than pretending to be a refined poet of love.

Next comes Giraut de Bornelh, whose singing Peire describes as thin, dry, joyless, and worn out. His songs are compared to an old saddle, something stiff, cracked, and exhausted from use. Peire jokes that if Giraut honestly looked at himself, he would realize he was worth almost nothing.

Then Peire turns to Bernart de Ventadorn, later regarded as one of the greatest troubadours. Here, however, Peire mocks his humble origins. He sneers that Bernart’s father was merely a servant skilled with a bow, while his mother worked around ovens gathering firewood. The implication is that Bernart came from low birth and therefore should not pretend to aristocratic refinement.

The fourth target is a Limousin jongleur from Brive, whom Peire portrays as weak, whining, and pitiful. When the man sings, he resembles a sick pilgrim wandering in misery, so pathetic that Peire almost feels compassion for him.

Guilhem de Ribas is mocked as morally rotten both outwardly and inwardly. His voice is harsh and hoarse, and his poetry is worthless. Peire ridicules even his appearance, comparing his eyes to silver bowls, perhaps bulging or metallic-looking.

Grimoart Gausmar is criticized because he is supposedly a knight acting like a jongleur. For Peire, this violates social order. Knights were supposed to fight and govern, not entertain like professional performers. He sarcastically curses anyone who encourages such confusion of roles by dressing him in fancy garments. Too many people, he says, are turning themselves into entertainers.

Peire Bermon is accused of theft and incompetence. Peire jokes that the man who stole Bermon’s song should also have broken his dangling foot while he was at it. The attack becomes physically mocking and cruel, showing how personal these literary rivalries could become.

Bernart de Saissac is mocked as a beggar with no real profession except seeking gifts and favors. Peire especially humiliates him for accepting an old greasy cloak from another nobleman, implying dependence, poverty, and lack of dignity.

Raimbaut is portrayed as arrogant and overly proud of his own poetry, though Peire dismisses him as lifeless and cold. He compares him to wandering beggars who survive by asking for alms.

Ebles de Saigna is ridiculed as someone unlucky in love despite pretending expertise in courtly love poetry. Peire portrays him as a bloated, boastful little entertainer who hires himself out everywhere, suggesting artistic insincerity and opportunism.

Gonzalgo Roitz pretends to be chivalrous and heroic, but Peire says he never struck a brave blow in battle unless his enemy was already running away. His poetry and his claims to knighthood are both treated as fraudulent performances.

The Lombard called Consezent is mocked as a coward who calls others cowards. His songs are loud and boastful but filled with rough, ugly language. Peire portrays him as blustering and false.

Finally, Peire turns to himself. He jokes that he sings both high and low and praises himself openly, yet claims that he truly is the master above all the others — though people can barely understand his words. The poem ends by declaring that the entire work was composed jokingly and laughingly at Puy-Vert against these “windbags,” meaning puffed-up pretenders.

Glossary

• troubadour – A poet-composer of medieval southern France, especially associated with courtly love songs.

• jongleur – A traveling entertainer, singer, or performer; lower in status than an aristocratic troubadour.

• sirvent – A servant or retainer.

• psalter – A book containing the Psalms, used in church worship.

• pack-saddle – A saddle used for carrying loads on animals; here symbolizing something worn-out and utilitarian.

• yew bow – A bow made from yew wood, prized in medieval archery.

• kindling – Small wood or material used to start a fire.

• alms – Charity given to the poor.

• cavalaria – Chivalry or knightly conduct.

• mottled garments – Multicolored or patterned clothing associated with entertainers or fashionable display.

• windbags – Boastful people full of empty self-importance.

• courtly love – The refined medieval ideal in which a knight or poet expresses disciplined devotion to a noble lady, often idealized and unattainable.

• trobar – The craft of composing troubadour poetry.

• refined – Cultivated, elegant, socially polished.

• hoarse – Rough or raspy in voice.

• boastful – Excessively proud and self-advertising.

Historical note

This poem comes from the 12th-century troubadour culture of Occitania in southern France, one of the first great lyric traditions in European vernacular literature. Troubadours performed in aristocratic courts where poetry, music, wit, and reputation were intensely competitive. Public satire was part of the culture. A poet could gain fame not only by praising love, but by humiliating rivals.

The poem belongs to a genre called the “sirventes,” a satirical or polemical composition. Unlike idealized love lyrics, the sirventes often attacked political enemies, rival poets, hypocrisy, or social decline.

What is striking historically is that many of the figures mocked here — especially Bernart de Ventadorn and Giraut de Bornelh — later became celebrated masters of medieval lyric poetry. The poem therefore gives a rare glimpse into the living rivalries of the troubadour world before literary history settled reputations.

The social world behind the poem was also highly fluid. Merchants, servants, knights, clerics, and entertainers increasingly mixed within court culture. Peire’s insults repeatedly attack this “confusion of ranks,” showing anxiety over changing social boundaries.

Author

The poem was written by Peire d'Alvernhe, a 12th-century troubadour from Auvergne in southern France. Medieval biographies describe him as educated, witty, and highly respected among poets. He was famous not only for love poetry but also for sharp satire and intellectual complexity.

“Chantarai d’aquests trobadors” was likely composed for performance at a courtly gathering where troubadours competed publicly. The poem functions almost like a medieval literary roast. Peire demonstrates his own superiority by verbally dismantling rival poets one by one.

At the same time, the final stanza reveals self-aware humor. He mocks himself too, admitting that people can barely understand his elaborate style. The poem therefore mixes arrogance, comedy, rivalry, and playful performance.

Modern connection

The poem feels surprisingly modern because it attacks self-promotion, fashionable posturing, and artistic pretension. Much like modern social media culture, everyone in the poem is performing an identity — refined lover, brave knight, deep artist, cultured intellectual — while Peire delights in exposing the gap between appearance and reality.

Deeper significance

At first glance, the poem seems almost entirely cruel and comic, but underneath the mockery lies a major cultural struggle about the meaning of love, art, status, and authenticity.

The earliest troubadour tradition often treated love as something transformative and ennobling. Courtly love was imagined as a discipline that refined the soul. A lover became more restrained, articulate, loyal, perceptive, and inwardly elevated through longing and devotion. Love was not merely erotic desire; it was a path toward self-cultivation and heightened consciousness.

But by the time of poems like this, troubadour culture had become fashionable and widely imitated. What had once been an intense aristocratic and almost spiritual discipline was becoming professionalized, performative, and commercially imitated. Peire repeatedly attacks people for “playing the role” of poet, lover, or knight without truly embodying the inner refinement those roles originally implied.

So the poem reflects a transition in troubadour culture:

from:
love as inward transformation, discipline, and refinement,

to:
love as social performance, literary fashion, and competitive self-display.

That is why Peire constantly mocks voices, clothes, lineage, gestures, and theatricality. He suspects that many troubadours no longer experience love deeply; instead, they manufacture the appearance of refinement.

Yet the irony is that Peire himself participates in the same performance culture he condemns. He boasts, mocks, competes, and self-advertises throughout the poem. The poem therefore reveals something profound about artistic and social life: movements born from genuine inward intensity often evolve into systems of imitation, status, and stylized performance.

In this sense, the poem is not only satire about bad poets. It is an early meditation on cultural decadence — on how living spiritual or emotional realities slowly harden into fashionable forms after success spreads them widely through society.