Sainte des Prez

Sainte des Prez was a trouvère probably from Le Prés in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre[1] and active in the 13th century.[2]

Nothing is known about her beyond what can be deduced from her name.[1] She shares her toponymic surname with Gui des Prés, named in a chansonnier from Siena as the composer of a song elsewhere attributed to Perrin d'Angicourt and who himself may be identical with Guy des Prés, bishop of Noyon from 1272 to 1296.[3] In 1581, Claude Fauchet included Sainte des Prez in his catalogue of French poets from before 1300.[4]

Sainte probably belonged to the school of trouvères centred on Arras.[2] She wrote a jeu-parti with the otherwise unknown lady of La Chaucie, probably La Chaussée in Crouy-sur-Ourcq.[3] This is her only surviving work. It has Picard dialectal features. She opens the poetic exchange with the line "Que ferai je, dame de la Chaucie" (What shall I do, Lady of Chaucie) by which the song is conventionally known.[5] In her response, the lady (dame) addresses Sainte as damoisele (maiden), meaning unmarried. The subject of their debate is how a woman ought to behave when a man declares his love for her. The older and more experienced married lady recommends letting the man have his say, but Sainte is afraid of being seduced by flattery.[6]

References
  1. Eglal Doss-Quinby, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer and Elizabeth Aubrey, Songs of the Women Trouvères (Yale University Press, 2001), p. 27.
  2. Doss-Quinby et al. (2001), p. 74.
  3. Roberto Crespo, "Il raggruppamento dei «Jeux partis» nei canzonieri A, a e b", in Madeleine Tyssens (ed.), Lyrique romane médiévale, la tradition des chansonniers (Université de Liège, 1991), pp. 399–428, at 402.
  4. Doss-Quinby et al. (2001), pp. 2–3.
  5. Doss-Quinby et al. (2001), pp. 81–83.
  6. Peter Dronke, Forms and Imaginings: From Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century(Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007), pp. 326–327.
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