Classic Literary Genres and Troubadour Poetry
The Classic Literary Genres
The classic literary genres
- Epic Poetry: It tells a story. Includes the novel, the story… are inspired by real events and the author released their inspiration.
- Poetry: Poetry is accompanied by the sound of a lyre, and was born in Greece after the heroic age.
- Dramatic Poetry: The drama. There are three types: tragedy, comedy, and drama.
His literary topics are Latin words that indicate very recurrent themes in world literature: Death, time, love, friendship, and locus amoenus (the perfect place).
The Epic and Lyric
- Roman-novels: Being written in verse and tells stories. It begins in the Matter of Britain (a set of stories that treat the Knights of the Round Table, Arthur, Lancelot, Tristan…).
- Fabilau: Tales of the people in verse.
- Lai: Short stories based on material from Britain.
Troubadour Poetry
Troubadour poetry is poetry, written in Occitan, seeking refinement, based on very strict rules and sung.
- Songs of feat: Explain episodes of fighting between the Christian armies and Arab armies and have a main character, a strong and brave warrior who becomes a myth.
- Troubadour poetry: Was born in Occitània courts, a new conception of love: the woman is not only an object of desire, but the knights won the shank of love, not by force but by culture, courtesy, music, and words.
The woman creates love, making the man courteous and forcing him to suffer and to feel inferior in this struggle to love her. The man’s love is usually impossible as the woman is married and controlled by her husband. The man expresses doubts, sadness, and loneliness in the form of poetry, which is the birth of troubadour poetry.
Minstrels
Minstrels were men of pleasure, fun, who were transmitting the poems of the troubadour. They were usually of humble origin. In addition to reciting or singing, they danced, did acrobatics… All this was always accompanied by a stringed instrument.
Troubadour Poem Characteristics
- Language: Was written in the style and language of Provence.
- Metrics: Are formally perfect. Consolidate the current system were rhythmic and rhyme were very strict. Did not support easy rhymes or false rhymes. They did not fix the stanzas, so every troubadour used the number of verses that would be better to go to the compositions.
- Gender:
- Love: song, dance, ballad, Pastorela, and dawn (Persian: troubadour, starches, gilós, and laugengiers)
- War: servants, hides, debate Planh
The Catalan Troubadours
- King Alfonso the Troubadour: A king so special: his court attracted the best troubadours to sing of his fame as a great monarch in Europe. During the time of the King, his kingdom brought troubadours that were important.
- Berenguer Palol: 12 compositions that have come down to us, his songs of love, of very simple expression and a shade of sadness and nostalgia.
- William of Berguedà: A great feudal lord. 31 poems have been kept. He is an intriguing and violent character, who knew how to be smart and polite when writing songs, but more abundant in his fierce criticism against their feudal foes.
- Ramon Vidal Besalú: A group of lyrical poems and three stories in long verse are retained. He was a troubadour.
- Cerverí: 120 compositions are preserved, written with a tone very close to the public, perfect and original rhymes, but very understandable. He expresses his negative opinion about some of the minstrels of the time, wicked and evil, in poems imitating themes of courtly love.