Peire Bremon Ricas Novas, “Rics pres, ferms e sobeirans” (BdT 330.15a)

This article provides a new critical edition and a commentary of Peire Bremon Ricas Novas’s “Rics pres, ferms e sobeirans”, a courtly love song composed between 1228 and 1257 and dedicated to Audiart del Baux. Built as a eulogy of the lady, the song focuses on the central theme of the moral and material ‘ricor’ (richness) of the latter. The complexity of the metrical form, which displays a systematic use of the technique of ‘rim derivatiu’, is paralleled by the semantic obscurity of a number of verses and hapaxes, all discussed in the commentary. Stanzas III and IV show echoes of Jaufre Rudel’s “amor de lonh”, since the lover-poet declares that the distance and the ethnical difference between himself and the lady are abolished by the strength of his feelings. The use of ethnonyms in stanza IV is closely examined: the lover-poet reveals that he loves a Castilian lady who looks like a ‘Serrana’ (the name of an Iberian population), admitting that he would like her even if she were Catalan or Syrian. These references to the lady’s ethnical origins are puzzling: they can be read as a calembour with burlesque overtones, as well as a climax aiming to define the real provenance of the lady or as a rhetorical device to underline that courtly love does not know any kind of boundary.