Debatable chivalry: A jeu-parti by the Duke of Brittany and its context

The thirteenth-century chansonnier Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [abbreviated BnF], MS f. fr. 847 [abbreviated trouvP] is a major source for thirteenth-century monophonic song.i When perusing the chansonnier, one is conscious of the careful copying of hundreds of trouvère songs by one or two text scribes and a single music scribe. After these songs, an apparent libellus transmits the work of several text and music scribes, whose hands are found nowhere else in the chansonnier. The libellus presents songs attributed, in all but one case, to the Duke of Brittany. A number of unusual features make this little book appended to trouvP a puzzling object. First, five (or possibly six) songs by an otherwise little-disseminated trouvère have been presented by a scribal group that took the decision to copy these songs together at the end of a substantial chansonnier. Second, the apparent libellus opens with a debate song, or jeu-parti, between the Duke of Brittany and Bernart de la Ferté: ‘Bernart a vous vueil demander’ (RS 840).ii This is unusual: the reader would expect to find a high register love song, or chanson, at the start of the libellus, rather than a jeu-parti.iii Even more unusually, the reader is instructed in a rubric to sing the fourth song in the libellus, ‘Longuement ai esté pensis’ (RS 1588), to the tune of the jeu-parti that opens the libellus