Gui's career would have been little out of the ordinary for a 13th-century nobleman if not for his literary pursuits, for he was an accomplished
troubadour in the
Occitan language, leaving behind five or six
lyric poems (or fragments), including a
sirventes and several
tensos. His fame as a troubadour was enough that a
vida of his life, long by the genre's standards, survives. He is described in glowing terms as generous, courtly, charming, loved of the ladies and the people, a capable knight and warrior. Besides his surviving work, his biographer records his composition of
coblas (
couplets) about love and "conversation" (
de solatz, perhaps signifying humour or pleasure). It found support among T. B. Eméric-David, Paul Meyer, Ludwig Selbach, Stanislaw Stronski, C. Fabre, Adolf Kolsen, Carl Appel, D. J. Jones, Martín de Riquer, Dietmar Rieger, Andrea Brusoni, and P. T. Ricketts. The identification has rested on the attribution in three
chansonniers, called
D,
I, and
K. The
rubric in these works gives the author as
Ricautz de Tarascon e.n Guis de Cavaillon: "Ricau de Tarascon and Lord Gui de Cavalhon". In all other cases where there is an onomastic difference between a
tenso and the ascription of the chansonnier, the latter is known to be correct (or to have good reason for the attribution). Further, in manuscript
C, where the attribution is simply ''Tenso d'en Cabrit e d'eu Ricau'', it immediately precedes a selection of Gui's pieces that, in the same way, are assigned to
Guionet and
Esperdut, other nicknames Gui used. Only Martín Aurell has strongly objected to the identification. He argues that Cabrit must have been a member of the urban noblesse of
Arles and owner of a small parcel of land near
Tarascon, documented in a notarial act of August 1203 at the house of Bertran Porcelet and probably dead by 1225. A
Guillelmus Aldebertus Cabritus (Guillem Aldebert Cabrit) was a
consul of Arles in 1197 and man known only as
Cabritus was a consul in 1209. Guillem Aldebert Cabrit also witnessed the testament of Rostanh Porcelet in 1186 and an 1198 donation to the
Knights Templar in Arles by the Porcelet family. That these figures named
Cabritus all acted in the same geographical theatre (Arles) and in connexion with the family (Porcelet) over a period of thirty years suggests that it was a single individual of some prominence at Arles. That this figure held land at Tarascon strongly suggests that he may have been Ricau's interlocutor. ==Legacy and influence==