Daude de Pradas (?), “Belha m’es la votz autana” (BdT 124.5)

The attribution of this love song to the troubadour from Rouergue, Daude de Pradas, according to the only Occitan testimony, i.e. song-book C, was considered impossible or at least suspicious by many scholars for the mere fact that its first verse is quoted, as a ‘chan on auvrignace’, in the “Roman de la Rose” (or Guillaume de Dole) attributed to Jean Renart and initially dated to the earliest years of the XIIIth century. However, in the light of the recent dating of Daude’s poetic activity between 1191 and 1242, the chronological criterion alone cannot resolve the issue of attribution. This paper, where a more conservative edition of the text than that by C. Appel (1890) is proposed, will now present for the first time codicological – i.e. order and sources of Daude’s section in Ms. C – as well as metrical, stylistic and musical data, on the basis of the notation present in Ms. W. The discussion leads to the hypothesis that the song might be the work of an author belonging to the group of Marcabru’s imitators and therefore relatively early (third quarter of the XIIth century), setting aside the isolated attribution to Daude de Pradas.