What is "tribolet"

Triblet \Trib"let\, Tribolet \Trib"o*let\, n.] [F. triboulet.]

1. A goldsmith's tool used in making rings.
   --Ainsworth.

2. A steel cylinder round which metal is drawn in the process of forming tubes.
   --Tomlinson.

3. (Blacksmithing) A tapering mandrel.

Tribolet was an obscure troubadour, known only for one song, the obscene Us fotaires que no fo amoros. The song's rubric was read as t'bolet by Giulio Bertoni, who identified its composer as Tremoleta, but Alfred Jeanroy suggested the reading "Tribolet", which is widely accepted. He also suggested that the composition attributed to him is a parody of a piece now lost. The song is preserved in one chansonnier (G, folio 128) dating from the final third of the thirteenth century, the same period in which the song may have been written.

The phrase "the one he loves" (le qui ama) found in the ninth and eighteenth verses has caused some confusion, since le seems masculine: "the one [man] he loves." On this reading, it appears that the composer is a frustrated homosexual, who has plenty of sex with women but misses sex with the man he desires. Francesco Carapezza has argued, however, that just as celes ("any woman") is an aberrant form of the usual celas, so le is just an unusual form of feminine la, in which case the poem is a comic exaggeration of heterosexual lust. According to C. H. Grandgent, the form le as masculine may indicate influence from Old French, and François Zufferey has catalogued other instances of the normal masculine lo replaced by le in Old Occitan.

Tribolet can refer to:

• Tribolet, an obscure troubadour, known only for one song
• José Tribolet (b. 1949), Portuguese computer scientist
• Louis de Tribolet, Swiss Olympic fencer