Alegret was a Gascon

Gascony

Gascony is an area of southwest France that was part of the "Province of Guyenne and Gascony" prior to the French Revolution. The region is vaguely defined and the distinction between Guyenne and Gascony is unclear; sometimes they are considered to overlap, and sometimes Gascony is considered a...

 troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

, one of the earliest lyric

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

 satirists

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 in the Occitan tongue, and a contemporary of Marcabru

Marcabru

Marcabru is one of the earliest troubadours whose poems are known. There is no certain information about him; the two vidas attached to his poems tell different stories, and both are evidently built on hints in the poems, not on independent information.According to the brief life in MS...

 (fl. c. 1145). One sirventes

Sirventes

The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

and one canso

Canso (song)

The canso is a song style used by the troubadours. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end...

survive of his poems. Nonetheless, his reputation was high enough that he found his way into the poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn

Bernart de Ventadorn

Bernart de Ventadorn , also known as Bernard de Ventadour or Bernat del Ventadorn, was a prominent troubador of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Now thought of as "the Master Singer" he developed the cançons into a more formalized style which allowed for sudden turns...

 and Raimbaut d'Aurenga. The work of Alegret is also intertextually and stylistically related to that of Peire d'Alvernhe

Peire d'Alvernhe

Peire d'Alvernhe or d'Alvernha was an Auvergnat troubadour with twenty-one or twenty-four surviving works. He composed in an "esoteric" and "formally complex" style known as the trobar clus...

.

Alegret was also one of the first troubadours to employ the feudal metaphor to describe courtly love

Courtly love

Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

. He describes his relationship to his domna (lady) as that of vassalage by calling himself her endomenjatz (basically, vassal or liegeman). Pelligrini saw this passage as imitating Bernart de Ventadorn, considered the master of this metaphor:

De sol aitan mi tengr'ieu per pagatz Quel vengues, mas jontas, denan El mostres de ginolhs ploran Cum suy sieus endomenjatz,

I should be satisfied simply if I might come before her with hands joined and show her, weeping, on my knees, how I am her endomenjatz,

Marcabru parodied the structure of Alegret's Ara pareisson li'aubre sec in his own poem Bel m'es quan la rana chanta. In his typically moralising tone he accuses of Alegret of being a flatterer who cuckolds his lord. Alegret is implicitly compared to the Tristan

Tristan

Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...

 of legend for he wears la blancha camiza (the white shirt symbolising a sexual relationship). In his own work Alegret criticses marritz drutz (faithless husbands), but primarily, like Cercamon

Cercamon

Cercamon , whose real name, as well as any actual biographical data, is unknown, was one of the earliest troubadours. He was apparently a jester of sorts, born in Gascony, who spent most of his career in the courts of William X of Aquitaine and perhaps of Eble III of Ventadorn...

, because they encourage promiscuity in women.

Works in translation

• Aissi cum selh qu'es vencutz ("Just as the one who's beat"), translated by James H. Donalson (2005)
• Ara pareisson ll'aubre sec ("Now all the trees appear dried up"), translated by James H. Donalson (2005)