Marcoat was a minor Gascon troubadour and joglar who flourished in the mid twelfth century. He is often cited in connexion with Eleanor of Aquitaine and is placed in a hypothetical "school" of poetry which includes Bernart de Ventadorn, Marcabru, Cercamon, Jaufre Rudel, Peire Rogier, and Peire de Valeria among others.[1] Of all his works, only two sirventes survive: Mentre m'obri eis huisel and Una re.us dirai, en Serra.[2]
Marcoat was an innovator building off the work of the contemporary Gascon Marcabru,[3] whose death he recalls in one of his works c. 1150.[4] Nonetheless, his works are very simple, the stanzas being composed of three heptasyllables rhyming in the form AAB.[2] It was he who first used the term sirventes to describe his poems;[2] the word appears in both of his surviving works, twice in one:
The meaning of these verses is obscure, as he was an early practitioner of the trobar clus style.[3][6] According to himself, he wrote vers contradizentz (contradictory verses).[6] He was a model for the later troubadour Raimbaut d'Aurenga.[3]