Foreword to tensos and partimens
The tensos and partimens linked to this page form part of a much larger project to provide a modern critical edition of the whole corpus of troubadour dialogue-pieces. This project was begun some years ago by Professor John Marshall and he prepared draft editions of some 80 pieces before eye-sight problems obliged him to abandon work on it. Professor Marshall handed over all his papers to us and it is our aim to complete what he had begun (for details, see Linda M. Paterson, L’édition des tensos et partimens, in Colloque international A.I.E.O. “Ab nou cor et ab nou talen”: nouvelles tendances de la recherche médiévale occitane (L’Aquila, 5-7 juillet 2001), ed. Anna Ferrari, in press).
Our efforts in this direction have benefited from the award of a Larger Research Grant by the British Academy (2001-2) to conduct a feasibility study with the assistance of Sarah Lowson. We also gratefully acknowledge the award of a Resource Enhancement grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board to fund the work of Dr Anna Radaelli in 2003-5 and a further Research Assistant in 2004-6. We should also like to thank Dr Dominique Dudemaine for the generous contribution of her time and expertise to the project.
We aim to publish all the tensos and partimens in hard copy in due course. Those pieces appearing on this website without such publication details represent provisional drafts. The editorial approach adopted is broadly that employed in Marcabru. A Critical Edition, ed. Simon Gaunt, Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, with John Marshall as philological advisor, Cambridge 2000 (see pp. 26-34 for details). While all editorial decisions have been arrived at through joint discussion, one person has assumed primary responsibility for preparing the edition of each dialogue-poem.
Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson
March 2004