Tra finzione e realtà: la 'conplancha' per Roberto d’Angiò, una voce per un re immaginato

• Main Author: Anna Radaelli
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Università di Napoli Federico II 2018-03-01
• Series: Lecturae Tropatorum
• Subjects: Old Occitan; Troubadour Lyric; Robert of Anjou; Angevins
• Online Access: http://www.lt.unina.it/Radaelli-2018S.pdf

This article proposes a new reading of the conplancha for the death of Robert of Anjou (d. 1343). The main line of the study considers the combination of the poetic text with the illustrated miniature that accompanies it as a sort of promotional manifesto, similar to the well-known propaganda policy of dynastic legitimacy adopted by the first Angevin house since the dawn of its establishment. The hypothesis advanced is that the clear historical falsification offered by the text and underscored by the miniature intended to express an unambiguous political position, supported by the Provencal party headed by the de Baux, in favor of a male hereditary line in the county of Provence and the Regno. The conplancha is thus part of the turbulent climate of the struggles for the right of succession to the throne following the death of the Angevin king. Further lines of investigation concern the particular setting of this lyrical-narrative text within the troubadour space of the fourteenth century. Both the metrical form and the narrative structure place the composition within the contiguous Italian tradition of the 'historical lament' ('lamento storico') – which in those same years was expressed by the serventese – and of the cantare on political subjects, whose typical rhetorical-narrative procedures are identifiable. Finally, peculiar linguistic and artistic details in the figurative style contribute towards the clarification of the two main components of Provençal and Neapolitan origin that characterize the composition.