La cesura épica en los trouvères: intervención de copistas y editores

Abstract

The usually called epic caesura constitutes an exception within the troubadour decasyllable; therefore, editors of this lyric manifestation have shown approaches not always respectful of the manuscript tradition in order to avoid it. In the best of cases, they felt forced to justify verses including epic caesura as an editorial option; but in the most extreme case they chose to suppress it and modify the codex’s lectio, when unique, ope ingenii.

In these pages I offer just a sample of this editorial –even scribal– approach out of some of the numerous editions published from the nineteenth century on, on thirteenth-century trouvères’ texts. The best example of the reservations in adopting this type of caesura (not so exceptional), in my view, is to be found in the lyrical corpus of the troubadour Thibaut de Champagne, published on numerous occasions, the latest version of which dates from 2018.