Who are Cerverí's Worst Enemies?

This reading proposes a new interpretation of a poem by Catalan troubadour Cerverí de Girona (fl. 1259-85), an interpretation that departs from the accepted, literal solution to this poem (looking for "enemies" Cerverì descries among the political or familial figures surrounding the poet) to show, via an intertextual reading, that these "enemies" are only metaphorical. Cerverì is the proud successor of two centuries of troubadour tradition at the Aragonese court of Pere the Great, facing the influx of fashionable Angevin trends, especially the dance-songs imported from the court of Pere of Arragon's enemy Charles of Anjou. Like Sordello's Ensehnamen, Cerverì's poem 'Una re dey a Deu grazir’ serves as a focal point to refract his present and past career: polemical when his patron was young, more stately now that Cerverí is the public voice of a king. It is a comparison with the Portuguese trovador Johan Soarez Coelho (active at the court of Alfonso III of Portugal until 1279) that conclusively proves the "identity" of Cerveri's "enemies": his own eyes that have betrayed him. The two poets would have interacted at the Toledo court of Alfonso X of Castile in 1269.