The Cançoners DB database gathers the research on Catalan songbooks that our research group has carried out in the last decades, with the idea of systematizing the data on one of the main medieval literary traditions, placed in the context of the written culture of the Crown of Aragon and also of its contacts with European traditions. Our relational database includes works, authors, manuscripts and bibliography, making it possible to connect, for example, people or places relevant to the different fields of medieval culture.

Recently, the project “Troubadours and European Identity: The Role of Catalan Courts” has added a digital and interactive historical map, connected to Cançoners DB, to capture the relationship between troubadours and Catalan courts. This new tool takes advantage of the possibilities of GIS technology and focuses on geographically representable data: the origin of the troubadours, the courts with which they were related and the place names cited in their works.

Our communication will comment on the objectives and criteria of these tools, the problems they have raised, the results obtained in our own research and the connections they allow with specialists in other disciplines or traditions.

 

About the speakers:
Miriam Cabré received her PhD from the University of Cambridge (1994) and is currently Professor of Romance Philology at the University of Girona (2006-) and vice-president of l’Association Internationale d’Études Occitanes (2019-).  

Her research activity has focused mainly on the work and figure of the troubadour Cerverí de Girona, along with the study of Catalan poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the manuscript transmission of medieval Catalan literature, the tradition of narrative production and the presence of troubadours in the Crown of Aragon.  

She is PI of the project Troubadours and European Identity: The Role of the Catalan Courts (ACUP 2016-19): and Courtly Written Culture in the Crown of Aragon: Materiality, Transmission and Reception (PID2019-109214GB-100). She edits the journal Mot so razo (ILCC – Centre d’Estudis Trobadorescos) and is Contributing editor of the Year’s Work on Modern Language Studies. She is co-director of the Cançoners DB database and the Narpan portal.  

Sadurní Martí received his PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Barcelona (1999) and since 2001 he is Professor of Catalan Philology at the University of Girona. He teaches history of medieval Catalan literature, textual criticism, publishing techniques and digital humanities. He is a research fellow at the Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes (UdG), a center he directed between 2008 and 2016.  

He has published several works on medieval Catalan literature, especially on the tradition of songbooks, the textual transmission of Francesc Eiximenis and the theory of textual criticism. He is a member of the Editorial Committee of the “Obres de Francesc Eiximenis”, a collection for which he is preparing critical editions of the Segon del Crestià (2022) and the Llibre dels àngels (2026).    

He co-directs the database Cançoners DB and the reference portal for medieval literary studies Narpan. He has published several studies and editions of Eiximenis’ works (Àngels e demonis. El quart tractat del “Llibre dels àngels”, 2003; Dotzè del Crestià vol. 1.1, 2005) and was part of the editorial team of the monumental Catàleg dels manuscrits de les obres de Francesc Eiximenis, ofm, conservats en biblioteques públiques (Barcelona 2011), of which he directs an updated digital version searchable in the Eiximenis DB database.  

More information 

 

This session is part of the presentation of the project TrobEu-Troubadours and European Identity: http://www.trob-eu.net/