Troubadour poetry in Occitania

The troubadours were poet-composers who wrote and sang in Occitan, the language of southern France, from about 1100 to the late 13th century. The earliest whose songs survive is William IX, Duke of Aquitaine (1071 to 1126), a powerful lord who also led a crusade. About 450 troubadours are known by name, among them Bernart de Ventadorn, Jaufre Rudel, Arnaut Daniel and a few women, the trobairitz, such as the Comtessa de Dia.¹²

Their central theme was fin'amor, 'refined love': the lover, often a knight, serves a lady of higher rank in a spirit of devotion and restraint, much as a vassal serves a lord. The poems have complex rhymes and stanza structures and were written with melodies, and genres included the love song (canso), the debate (tenso) and the dawn song (alba). The origins are debated. Some scholars point to Latin church poetry and the feudal court, others to Arabic songs of Muslim Spain, and the evidence does not settle it. The Albigensian Crusade, which began in 1209, destroyed the courts that supported the poets and ended the tradition in its home region. The troubadour style spread. It led to the trouveres of northern France, the Minnesang of Germany, the Sicilian poets, and through them Dante and Petrarch.¹²