La biographie de rutebeuf

La complainte de rutebeuf
Le miracle de théophile
Rutebeuf was a French trouvère.

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Rutebeuf (fl. 1249-77) (article in english for Routledge Resources Online - Medieval Studies)

Writing for conversion

Notwithstanding his overall pessimism, Rutebeuf did not stop seeking to influence the real world. His poems are often a call for action, and aim to be action itself, or at least reaction to the current of the times. To a Christian of the Western world in the Middle Ages, the final objective is conversion towards God.

This helps in understanding the way Rutebeuf wrote. Based on literary tradition as well as consideration of the external reality, his works establish an analogy between the two: innovating given themes and techniques implies the writer's will to intervene in and change the given situation. In other words, poetic conversion urges moral or religious conversion. The Voie de Paradis (or Voie d'Humilité), encouraging believers to confess during the period of Easter, begins with a description of spring that reminds of the convention of courtly love songs. Spring, however, represents here spiritual regeneration through repentance, the mechanism of w

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Little is known of Rutebeuf. Born in 1245 in Champagne, dead in Paris forty years later, he was most likely a juggler by trade, with probably some training as a cleric, since his Latin was good. The details of his life are gleaned from his poems—a source which can reflect reality as accurately as a funhouse mirror. But since the simplest solution tends to be the best, it might just be easier to take him at his word.

First, there’s the name: “Rute,” in Old French, means both “crude” or “coarse”; and “Beuf” means “ox” or “bull,” the “boeuf” of modern French. The name, regardless of whether it was given to him by someone else or bestowed by the poet upon his own brow, is fitting, since his poetry is lumbering, thumpy, and stubborn, like the ox of medieval farms.

The poems I have translated here are taken from Les poèmes de l’infortune, a

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Rutebeuf

Rutebeuf (or Rustebeuf) (fl. 1245 – 1285) was a French trouvère (poet-composers who worked in France's northern dialects).

Early life

He was born in the first half of the 13th century, possibly in Champagne (he describes conflicts in Troyes in 1249); he was evidently of humble birth, and was a Parisian by education and residence.

Career

His name is not mentioned by his contemporaries. He frequently plays in his verse on the word Rutebeuf, which was a pen name, and is variously explained by him as derived from rude boeuf and rude oeuvre ("coarse ox" or "rustic piece of work").

Paulin Paris thought that he began life in the lowest rank of the minstrel profession as a jongleur (juggler and musician). Some of his poems have autobiographical value. In Le Mariage de Rutebeuf ("The Marriage of Rutebeuf") he writes that on 2 January 1261 he married a woman old and ugly, with neither dowry nor amiability. In the Complainte de Rutebeuf he details a series of misfortunes that had reduced him to abject destitution. In these circumstances he