{"id":75,"date":"2015-09-25T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/?p=75"},"modified":"2022-11-23T11:09:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T16:09:18","slug":"claudia-keelan-female-troubadours-and-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/2015\/09\/claudia-keelan-female-troubadours-and-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"Claudia Keelan: Female Troubadours and Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trobairitz\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a Creative Writing major, I\u2019ve written poems, plays, prose. As an Italian minor, I\u2019ve studied language extensively, including literature in other languages. Despite that, before studying it in my poetry workshop, I\u2019d never given translation much thought. I never considered translation a form of creative writing; if the original was the creative writing piece, the translator seemed to be merely the messenger.<\/p>\n

However, studying translation and the work of Claudia Keelan gave me a new perspective. Keelan takes the poems of the trobairitz<\/em>, the female troubadours of the 1100s and 1200s, and translates them into modern day English, bringing them into this century with words like \u201cswag,\u201d \u201cdude,\u201d and \u201cgirlfriend\u201d featured prominently. Clearly, these are not direct translations of poetry from the 12th<\/sup> and 13th<\/sup> centuries. A lot of choice and intentionality goes into translating a poem \u2013 aside from the liberties one can take with diction, there are line breaks, punctuation, and a rhyme scheme or lack thereof to consider. For Keelan, one of her major focuses was maintaining the musicality of the pieces, and so rhyme and rhythm characterize the verses.<\/p>\n

Her passion for the topic made both the poetry and the reading compelling \u2013 when she spoke to our poetry class, she referred to the trobairitz <\/em>as her \u201csisters\u201d and lamented that she \u201cmissed them.\u201d Interesting, given that when she was introduced to the poems, Keelan didn\u2019t like them and felt they were flat and bland. After some research, however, an initial disdain turned into a twenty year endeavor. In the end, she wrote the poems of the trobairitz<\/em> in a period of about six months, but the preparation and language learning took much, much longer. Keelan mentioned that she feels she \u201cparticipated in a canonical American English translation,\u201d given that the poetry of the troubadours has been translated into music countless times. However, the trobairitz<\/em>, the female troubadours, have not been translated as frequently.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why these translations are important. Claudia Keelan took these young women from a distant time, these women so defined by the social systems they were forced to work with, and revitalized their voices. From a \u201cfeminist\u201d point of view and a \u201cheretical Catholic \u2013 as in, no one\u2019s going to define my Catholicism\u201d point of view, Keelan greatly respected what the trobairitz<\/em> had to say about their places in society and their \u201creligion of love\u201d at a time when marriage was seen as a social transaction and marrying for love, as is the social norm today, was a nonexistent concept. Though the male troubadours used more wit and vocabulary in their poems, Keelan commended and admired the trobairitz<\/em> for their honesty. When asked why she chose to modernize the language, Keelan explained that \u201ctheir problems, difficulties, pains, and happinesses are modern.\u201d And so they are. Claudia Keelan took those modern sentiments, that raw honesty, and reworked them into terms and a language we are able to understand. Her decisions make these translations uniquely hers; her commitment to this art enabled the trobairitz<\/em>\u2019 voices to reach new generations.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Claudia Keelan, I now understand the difficulty of translation, the art, the originality, the creativity \u2013 and, perhaps most importantly, the sheer power.<\/p>\n

Kinsey Cantrell
\nSophomore<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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