Editing Jaufre Rudel (section)

==Rudel in legend and literature==
[[Image:Geoffroy Rudel.jpg|thumb|A Romantic portrayal of Jaufre singing to his love from the frontispiece of [[Étienne-François de Lantier|Étienne-François de Lantier's]]'s play "Geoffroy Rudel, ou le Troubadour" (1825)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wolf |first1=George |last2=Rosenstein |first2=Roy |title=The poetry of Cercamon and Jaufré Rudel |date=1983 |publisher=Garland |location=New York |page=92}}</ref>]]
Nineteenth-century [[Romanticism]] found his legend irresistible. It was the subject of poems by [[Ludwig Uhland]], [[Heinrich Heine]], [[Robert Browning]] (''Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli'') and [[Giosué Carducci]] (''Jaufré Rudel''). [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] returned several times to the story in his poetry, in ''The Triumph of Time'', ''The Death of Rudel'' and the now-lost ''Rudel in Paradise'' (also titled ''The Golden House''). In ''The Triumph of Time'', he summarises the legend:

<blockquote><poem>There lived a singer in France of old
By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she.
And finding life for her love's sake fail,
Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,
Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,
And praised God, seeing; and so died he.</poem></blockquote>

<blockquote><poem>Died, praising God for his gift and grace:
For she bowed down to him weeping, and said
"Live"; and her tears were shed on his face
Or ever the life in his face was shed.
The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung
Once, and her close lips touched him and clung
Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;
And so drew back, and the man was dead.</poem></blockquote>

Sir [[Nizamat Jung Bahadur]], of [[Hyderabad, Telangana|Hyderabad]], also wrote an epic poem on the subject, ''Rudel of Blaye'', in 1926.

The [[France|French]] [[dramatist]] [[Edmond Rostand]] took the legend of Rudel and Hodierna as the basis for his 1895 verse drama ''[[La Princesse Lointaine]]'', but reassigned the female lead from Hodierna to her jilted daughter [[Melisende of Tripoli|Melisende]], played by [[Sarah Bernhardt]]. However, there are older mentions of Rudel loving Melisende, such as [[Frederic Mistral]]'s 1878 Provençal dictionary ''[[Lou Tresor dóu Felibrige]]'' which states (translation): "Mélisende, Mélissande or Mélissène, countess of Tripoli, daughter of Aimeri de Lusignan, loved by the troubadour Geoffroi{{note|Geoffroi is one of the French forms of the Occitan name Jaufre.}} Rudel".<ref>The article ''Melisendo'' in [https://books.google.com/books?id=yYx--JBqDX4C&dq=%22Tr%C3%A9sor%20d%C3%B3u%20F%C3%A9librige%22%20and%20%22MELISENDO%22%20and%20%22troubadour%22&pg=PA315 Lou Tresor dóu Felibrige], volume 2, 1878.</ref>

More recently, [[Finland|Finnish]] [[composer]] [[Kaija Saariaho]] has written an [[opera]] about Rudel and Clémence (the name used for Hodierna) called ''[[L'amour de loin]]'', with a libretto by [[Amin Maalouf]], which was given its world premiere at the [[Salzburg Festival]] in 2000 and its US premiere at the [[Santa Fe Opera]] in 2002.