Ernoul Caupain was a trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

, probably active in the mid-thirteenth century. Two pastourelle

Pastourelle

The pastourelle is a typically Old French lyric form concerning the romance of a shepherdess. In most of the early pastourelles, the poet knight meets a shepherdess who bests him in a wit battle and who displays general coyness. The narrator usually has sexual relations, either consensual or...

s, a chanson courtoise, and a religious poem have survived of his work. Gustav Gröber

Gustav Gröber

Gustav Gröber was a German Romance philologist.-Biography:...

 suggested that he was the same person as the Copin who judged a jeu parti

Jeu parti

Jeu parti [Fr.; Occitan joc partit, “partimen”]. A debate or dialogue in the form of a poem. According to Guilhem Molinier, the author of Las leys d'amors, a 13th-century treatise on how to write poetry in the style of the troubadours, there is a clear difference between a partimen and a tenso: in...

between members of the literary circle flourishing in and around Arras

Arras

Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...

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Ernoul's poems have relatively long strophes of eleven, twelve, or fifteen lines. He typically uses octosyllables mixed with hexa- or heptasyllabic lines. His melodies are in the authentic G mode

Musical mode

In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...

 with strong tonal centres. They are written in bar form

Bar form

Bar form is a musical form of the pattern AAB.-Original Use:The term comes from the rigorous terminology of the Meistersinger guilds of the 15th to 18th century who used it to describe their songs and the songs of the predecessors, the minnesingers of the 12th to 14th century...

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List of works

• De l'amour celi sui espris (religious song)
• Ier main pensis chevauchai (pastourelle)
• Entre Godefroi et Robin (pastourelle)
• Quant j'oi chanter ces oiseillons (chanson)