Talk:Cantiga de amigo

Cantiga d'amigo
In view of the manuscript evidence, which is unequivocal, the title of the article should be changed to cantiga d'amigo, with cross references if necessary. And now that there is a reference, the assertion that this is an article without references should be removed by a competent editor. maurice boaz


 * Cantiga de amigo is the modern spelling, used by today's scholars in Portuguese. It should remain as is. FilipeS 21:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Cantiga de amigo is a spelling used by amateurs outside the field; competent scholars working in this area use the correct form, with elision. The title of the article, to be accurate, should be cantiga d'amigo maurice boaz


 * Nonsense. Even the reputed Instituto Camões writes "Cantigas de amigo".
 * Who's the judge of what are "amateurs" and what aren't -- you?
 * And why should that matter, anyway? This is Wikipedia. It's written mostly for the general public, most of which is composed of amateurs, not for academics. FilipeS 23:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The Instituto Camoens does not have a good reputation, certainly not in this area. If you don't believe me (about the correct spelling, and the textual evidence for the elision), consult an expert, like Dr Stephen Parkinson of Oxford, or Dr Rip Cohen of King's College London.  Your argument that Wikipedia is for amateurs and therefore need not be accurate is rather rich. maurice boaz

What a nonsense!! Instituto Camões does not have a good reputation? it is like saying British Council does not have a good reputation or like Instituto Cervantes does not have a good reputation or that Alliance française does not have a good reputation, or that  the Società Dante Alighieri does not have a good reputation or the Goethe-Institut does not have a good reputation. Congratulations I haven'tt laugh this much for a long time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.3.4 (talk) 23:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The laugh is on you, but to laugh one needs first to understand. It is absurd to compare the Instituto Camoens (a chaotic and notorious entity) to, e.g., the Goethe-Institut. In any event, I said it certainly does not have a good reputation insofar as Galician-Portuguese lyric is concerned.  In that area its reputation is exactly zero. maurice boaz

p.s. It seems the Instituto Camões has one small page on the cantigas d’ amigo, yet such their competence that they commit three significant errors in that minute space. First, they show a photograph of one side of the ‘Pergaminho Sharrer’, which contains only cantigas d’ amor and so is inappropriate (they might have used the 'Pergaminho Vindel' instead). Second, they print the text of a cantiga d’ amor (a man is speaking to a woman) of Johan Zorro. This is bad enough, but even then the text is botched. Here is the second strophe as presented by the Instituto Camões (they take their text from the 1926 edition of J.J. Nunes, so both the textual error and the notion that it is a cantiga d’amigo are due to him): Em Lisboa sobre lo lez / barcas novas mandei fazer, / ay mia senhor velida! The problem here is that lez is wrong. There is no such word. The manuscripts faithfully copy an error from their exemplar; but the mistake is easily explained, since scribes commonly confuse the letters z and r. The reading must be ler, and this was corrected long ago. See Giuseppe Tavani, “LER. Per una correzione congetturale alle cantigas de amigo CV 246 = CB 645 e CV 754 = CB 1151-1152”, Cultura Neolatina XIX (1959): 251-264  (reprinted in G. Tavani, Ensaios Portugueses. Filologia e Linguística, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional - Casa de Moeda, 1988, pp. 361-376). Ler derives from a Celtic word for ‘sea’ (cf. Old Irish ler, Welsh llyr), and this in turn comes from the Indo-European root *leiH (H is a laryngeal consonant). The same word occurs in a cantiga d’ amigo of Nuno Fernandez Torneol (B 645 / V 246). Scholars now accept the correction in both texts. So although it may seem 'atrevido' to question the reputation of so august an agency, their page on cantigas d’amigo reflects no scholarship, nor even so much as an undergraduate’s understanding of the genre.maurice boaz

The Instituto Camoes (http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/literatura/origenslit.htm) allegedly reproduces the "Cantiga da Garvaia", from the "Cancioneiro da Ajuda", but what they have put there is a page of the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional (Colocci-Brancuti); and of course the cantiga in question is only found in the Cancioneiro da Ajuda. So (1) they have wrongly identified the manuscript, and (2) the folio cannot possibly contain the text they claim. In short, two mistakes in two lines: it would be hard to do worse.maurice boaz

Maurice Boaz:

First, they show a photograph of one side of the ‘Pergaminho Sharrer’, which contains only cantigas d’ amor because in the page (if you manage to read Portuguese) there is a paragraph about cantigas d'amor: “Típicas da poesia galaico-portuguesa, encontram-se também nas cantigas de amor e noutras variedades poéticas medievais, persistindo até muito tarde na literatura medieval.” So the print of the ‘Pergaminho Sharrer’, is correct in the page.


 * sorry, but you're wrong. they are together ('cantigas d'amigo' and the Perg. Sharrer).

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/literatura/cantigasamigo.htm --Maurice boaz 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Second, a barcarola is a cantiga d'amigo not a cantiga de amor: Barcarola


 * that's a circular argument. cantigas d'amigo have female speakers (except in dialogs, and in about a dozen poems with a narrative voice); that song has a male speaker.  anyway, a barcarola is a modern critical fiction, not a sub-genre of cantiga d'amigo.--Maurice boaz 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Third, if they take the text from a 1926 edition (as you said) and they reproduced the error from the scribes, it seems they are correct. That is the correct way to do it, they do not have to make corrections. Further revisions interpretations and corrections of scribe’s errors is for Scholars and for a bigger page on the subject. There are only a few lines about cantigas d’amigo, it is not an essay. Their job is not to make corrections or present a work revised or correct the original with the new theories. The page is good. Now, if you want a more academic work you are not going to find it in a few lines.


 * so now you say they have no responsibility to be accurate? Ok, but then admit that they are not trustworthy. Your notions of textual criticism would be shocking if expressed by anyone who had any notion of philology.--Maurice boaz 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

No it does not seem 'atrevido', only funny. That is why I laughed. I was not laughing of you but of what you wrote.


 * your sense of humour eludes me.--Maurice boaz 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but where is the page of the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional (Colocci-Brancuti) in that page?

http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/literatura/origenslit.htm --Maurice boaz 13:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

"The problem here is that lez is wrong. There is no such word." There is one word in Portuguese "lés", we use in: " de lés a lés" it means from one side to the other side or from one margin (shore) of the river to the other. From a text of Manuel JoséDe Paiva, Enfermidades, you can read: "defazar, de arromba, démo, démixinho, de lez a lez, dá-lhe que dá-lhe, dá-lhe que lhe darás. " Lez is the old spelling and makes sense because he wrote "Em Lisboa sobre lo lez barcas novas mandei fazer" - How could he have a boat made on the sea? He had the boat made on the shore of the river, not on the sea, but, who am I to argue with Giuseppe Tavani? By the way, in Lisbon, there is a river, the Tagus, not the sea, I think Johan Zorro could tell the difference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.181.53.194 (talk) 20:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, we've heard all the unconvincing arguments in defense of 'lez'; they hold no water. Tavani is often wrong, but here he is right. The original correction is not his anyway: in Torneol B 645 / V 246 the correction was made much earlier by Varnhagen 1872 and subsequently accepted by such scholars as Monaci 1875 and Michaelis 1904 -- well before Tavani was born).  Why don't you read his article and think it over. As to river and sea, the same poet, Zorro, mentions them together in a cantiga d'amigo: Jus' a lo mar e o rio.  From my apartment in Lisbon I could see the estuary of the Tejo and the Atlantic, both at the same time, as if one led into the other (amazing fact). There is a bit more to textual criticism than you seem to appreciate.maurice boaz  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maurice boaz (talk • contribs) 12:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

from all you say I infer you know nothing about philology in general or textual criticism in particular. Fine, but then don't pretend to evaluate texts or critical editions.--Maurice boaz 13:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You know what, this argument is ridiculous and totally irrelevant. Cantigas de amigo are a part of Portuguese history and culture, and should be spelled as most people spell it in modern Portuguese. I'm sure that Maurice doesn't spell the name "Shakespeare" the way the playright did when he was alive. Besides, he's presented no sources to back up his pedantry, anyway. Not to mention that he moved the page before there was any consensus here in the Talk Page. Reverted. :P.S. And he can't even spell "Camões" right. How typical. FilipeS 22:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The argument, Felipe, veered from the spelling of cantigas d' amigo to the reputation and reliability of the Inst. Cam. and from there to the text of a poem of Johan Zorro. What I have said is not irrelevant (and you are, I believe, being uncivil).  As I said at the beginning, the sources are in the manuscripts themselves.  See the edition of R. Cohen, p. 36, for places where the expression is used in the manuscripts.  With all due respect, the spelling of Shakespeare's name is irrelevant.  And Camoens is how the name was regularly spelled during the poet's lifetime, and is still the spelling used in English.  For me it has the advantage (here in this space) that I need not use a til.  That everybody believes something is right does not make it right.--Maurice boaz 08:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I changed the title of the article to the proper form, cantiga d' amigo. Though I was not aware that a consensus was necessary to correct an error, neither of my interlocutors seems to be qualified to vote on this issue. J. J. Nunes, in his 3 volume edition (1926-28) uses this form, and so does every qualified scholar who has worked in the field, whether Portuguese, Galician, French, Spanish, Italian, German, British or American, beginning with the great pioneers, Lang, Michaelis, and Nobiling. It is also the form used throughout the new critical edition cited in the article.--Maurice boaz 09:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Please stop moving the article without consensus, or you shall be reported. FilipeS 12:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I was editing my own prose, which you have now reverted to a previous version, and putting the correct spelling of the word. Do I really need the consensus of those who obviously have not the slightest qualifications to judge the questions at hand?  If so, let it be, but then I shall remove ALL my changes, and you can have back the piece of shameless junk that was there when I began.--Maurice boaz 13:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * In protest I have writhdrawn texts and translations of the cantigas d'amigo, both of which are my own. They are copyrighted material; please do not put them back.137.73.120.57 13:56, 28 September 2007 (UTC)mb/rc


 * ok, I put them back. Why punish the public for your behavior.  Notice, Sir Filipe, prince of proktoi: the manuscripts that contain the phrase cantigas d' amigo are not medieval; so you are reverting to an error.  This is positively my last word.  If you want to show the world again that you are one large gaping and grotesquely arrogant proktos, keep changing what I say back to the errors you or others have placed here.  Valeatis!--Maurice boaz 15:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * You should read Civility. You're far too rude with everyone. That's why you always clash with people. FilipeS 17:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)