Troubadours and Medieval Literature

The High Middle Ages was a period of remarkable literary production, with new forms of vernacular literature emerging in the major languages of Europe — French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, and Provençal. The troubadour tradition of southern France invented the poetry of courtly love and was one of the most influential literary movements of the period. The Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes and his successors created one of the most enduring literary traditions in the Western canon. The chanson de geste of northern France celebrated the heroic deeds of Charlemagne and his paladins. And the Italian poetry of the Sicilian School and the Dolce Stil Novo prepared the way for Dante and the Italian Renaissance.

This cluster explores the troubadour tradition and the medieval literature of the High Middle Ages. The articles in the related long-tail pages provide deeper examinations of specific aspects of the topic.

The standard English-language introduction to the troubadour tradition is Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (eds.), “The Troubadours: An Introduction” (Cambridge, 1999). Robert Boenig, “The Troubadours: An Introduction” (Notre Dame, 1996), is the older single-author treatment. The page below uses both, and the surviving chansonniers (the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3207, the Provençal chansonnier) as primary material. The Italian and German reception of the troubadour tradition is treated separately.

The Troubadour Tradition

The troubadour tradition emerged in southern France in the late eleventh century, and it flourished until the early thirteenth century. The troubadours were poets who composed in Old Occitan (the language of the troubadours, also called Provençal or Langue d’oc), and they sang of chivalry, courtly love, and aristocratic values. The earliest known troubadour was Guilhem IX, Duke of Aquitaine (1071–1127), who composed in a style that anticipated the later development of the tradition.

The troubadour tradition developed a sophisticated poetic style that included the canso (a love song), the sirventes (a satirical or moralizing poem), the tenson (a debate poem), the pastourelle (a poem in which a knight meets a shepherdess), the alba (a dawn song in which lovers part at daybreak), and the balada (a dance song). The troubadours developed a sophisticated vocabulary of love, with terms for the various stages and emotions of the love relationship, and they developed a sophisticated theory of poetic composition that emphasized the formal virtues of clarity, conciseness, and elegance.

The great troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries included Bernart de Ventadorn (c. 1150–1200), Raimbaut d’Aurenga (c. 1144–1173), Arnaut Daniel (fl. 1180–1200), Guiraut de Bornelh (c. 1138–1215), and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), who wrote a treatise on vernacular eloquence (the De Vulgari Eloquentia) that ranked the troubadours as the supreme poets of the vernacular. The troubadours composed for the aristocratic courts of southern France, northern Spain, and northern Italy, and they found patrons in the great lords of the region, including the counts of Toulouse, Provence, and Barcelona.

The Trouvère Tradition

The trouvère tradition of northern France emerged in the late twelfth century as a parallel to the troubadour tradition of the south. The trouvères composed in Old French (the language of the Langue d’oïl), and they sang of similar themes to the troubadours — chivalry, courtly love, and aristocratic values. The trouvères adapted the forms and themes of the troubadours to the tastes of the northern aristocracy, and they developed a distinctive style of their own.

The great trouvères of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries included Conon de Béthune (c. 1150–c. 1220), Thibaut de Champagne (1201–1253), Gace Brulé (c. 1160–c. 1213), and Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1130–c. 1190), who was also one of the great writers of romances in the vernacular. The trouvères composed for the aristocratic courts of northern France, and they found patrons in the great lords of the region, including the counts of Champagne, Artois, and Flanders.

The trouvère tradition was closely tied to the romance tradition of northern France, and many trouvères were also writers of romances. Chrétien de Troyes, for example, composed both lyric poems and romances, and he was responsible for the development of the Arthurian romance in its most mature form. The trouvère tradition also influenced the German Minnesang, the Italian Sicilian School, and the English tradition of romance that flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The Arthurian Romances

The Arthurian legends were one of the most enduring products of the medieval literary imagination. The legends of King Arthur, Lancelot, Ginevra, Tristan and Isolde, Perceval, and the Holy Grail were developed by a series of French, German, and English writers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they became one of the most influential literary traditions in the Western canon.

The basic Arthurian story was established by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), a pseudo-historical work that presented King Arthur as a historical figure and that described his reign as a golden age of British history. Wace of Jersey adapted Geoffrey’s work into Old French in his Roman de Brut (1155), and Layamon adapted it into Middle English in his Brut (c. 1200). The Arthurian tradition was further developed by the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, who composed a series of romances in the 1170s and 1180s that transformed the Arthurian legends into the form that has been inherited by the modern world.

Chrétien de Troyes composed five major Arthurian romances: Erec et Enide (c. 1170), Cligès (c. 1176), Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (c. 1177), Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (c. 1177), and Perceval, the Story of the Grail (c. 1180). Chrétien’s romances presented the knight as a model of chivalric conduct and developed the themes of courtly love and the quest for adventure. The romances were widely read and imitated, and they became the model for the Arthurian romances of the following centuries.

The German adaptations of the Arthurian legends included the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1200–1210), the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210), and the Erec and Iwein of Hartmann von Aue (c. 1180–1200). The English adaptations included the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1380), the Le Morte d’Arthur of Thomas Malory (1485), and the works of the Pearl poet and the Alliterative Revival. The Arthurian legends continued to inspire writers in subsequent centuries, and they remained a major literary tradition into the modern era.

The Chanson de Geste

The chanson de geste (“song of heroic deeds”) was another major French literary tradition. The chansons de geste were long narrative poems, typically composed in stanzas of decasyllabic or alexandrine lines, and they celebrated the heroic deeds of the great knights of the past. The most famous of the chansons de geste was the Chanson de Roland, which was composed in the late eleventh century and which tells the story of the death of Roland, the commander of Charlemagne’s rearguard, in a battle in the Pyrenees.

The chansons de geste were typically organized in cycles of related poems. The cycle of Charlemagne included the Chanson de Roland, the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, and the Chanson de Guillaume. The cycle of Guillaume d’Orange included the Chanson de Guillaume, the Aliscans, and the Chevalerie d’Ogier de Danemarche. The cycle of the Crusades included the Chanson d’Antioche and the Chanson de Jérusalem. The cycles of Doon de Mayence and Garin le Loherain were later developments.

The chansons de geste celebrated the heroic values of the feudal aristocracy — loyalty, courage, honor, and service to lord and faith. The chansons were widely read and performed in the aristocratic courts and the towns of the period, and they remained a major form of literary entertainment into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The chansons influenced the development of the romance tradition in France and the epic traditions of other European languages, including the German Nibelungenlied and the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid.

The Italian Tradition

The Italian literature of the High Middle Ages was more limited in scope than the French and German traditions, but it was of great importance for the later development of the Italian language and literature. The Sicilian School of poetry at the court of Frederick II in the thirteenth century adapted the troubadour tradition to Italian, and the Dolce Stil Novo (“Sweet New Style”) of the late thirteenth century refined the troubadour themes into a more philosophical and introspective poetry that would influence Dante Alighieri.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was the supreme poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy — comprising the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso — is one of the supreme works of world literature. In it, Dante tells the story of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice. The Divine Comedy is a comprehensive synthesis of medieval Christian thought, of medieval political and ecclesiastical life, and of the Italian literary tradition. It established the Tuscan dialect as the standard literary language of Italy, and it has been a touchstone of Western literature ever since.

Sources

Principal sources used in this article:

Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (eds.), The Troubadours: An Introduction (Cambridge, 1999).

Further reading:

Robert Boenig, The Troubadours: An Introduction (Univ. of Notre Dame, 1996).

For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).