Peire de Valeira

Who is Peire de Valeira?

Peire de Valeira, Valeria, or Valera was a Gascon troubadour. Since troubadour poetry probably originated in northwest Aquitaine and first spread—within a generation—south into Gascony, Peire was one of the earliest troubadours. Only two of his poems survive, one canso and one cobla.

His birthplace was Valera, near Podensac and Saint-Macaire in the Gironde. His vida places his birthplace in the fief of Arnaut Guillem de Marsan, who was himself a troubadour. He was a contemporary of Marcabru and originally a jongleur. His poems were typical for the time, according to Uc de Saint Circ, the probable author of his vida, being about natural objects, but not of great value to the biographer's time. But Uc saves his harshest critique for the end, as Elizabeth Poe relates:

The unexpected afterthough, one of the factors contributing to the humor of the sentence ... is another typical device of Uc's style. He catches us off guard with this tactic at the end of the short vida about Peire de Valeira, for example, which he concludes with the harsh judgement: Sei cantar non aguen gran valor "His songs did not have much value" . . .and just when we think he has completed his devastating critique, he adds ni el "and neither did he."