Provençal lyric: characteristics and brief summary. Comparison between Provençal lyric and Sicilian school.
Provençal lyric poetry has its own characteristics that make it different from all other forms of poetry of the time. Not only that: they also make it extremely different from the Sicilian school of poets such as Giacomo da Lentini, who also takes its cue from the same tradition.
But what are these characteristics? Let’s look at it in an extremely schematic way. In the meantime, if you want, you can learn more here:
Provençal lyric: characteristic outline
Here are the main characteristics of Provençal lyric poetry:
- Audience : shorts (limited audience)
- Purpose : entertainment/fun
- Typology : minor compositions in honour or praise of the patron lord, inspired by warlike activities, satire etc…;
- Courtly love , characterized by humble homage or courtship of the lady and intended as service. Love as faithful devotion (as towards a feudal lord), aspiration to a possession that the knight can never have
- Love devoid of “spiritual” ennobling force, but endowed with sensuality
- Secret, adulterous, extramarital love that ultimately becomes like a game (contrast with Christian love)
- Secular poetry
Sicilian Poetry: Characteristics Outline
Here is a schematic summary of the characteristics of Sicilian poetry:
- Audience : wider courtly environment (court of Frederick II).
- Purpose : the poem is written to be read individually (no longer a collective but an individual function).
- Themes : Love (exclusive topic), adaptation of profane love to faith (as a sort of justification for secularism), love still understood as sensual love in which, however, a spiritualization of the female figure is anticipated which, however, does not occur. An attempt is made to elevate profane love to a dominant value.
- Language : Search for a literary language, which is far from everyday use and which has the same literary dignity as Latin (illustrious, courtly Sicilian vernacular).
