The vowel mosaic in the Cansos of Bernart de Ventadorn

Abstract

A true poet, Bernart de Ventadorn claims to derive inspiration from the Muse of Love in order to explain the excellence of his verse. If we study the vowels in "Non es meravelha s'eu chan", certain definite patterns emerge, patterns that strongly suggest the hand of a self-conscious, albeit inspired, artist. Insofar as our study of the intraversicular stressed vowels has shown that the vowels naturally fall into groups of 2,2 we have utilized the same division here and found that such a grouping turns out to be equally revelatory.