troubadour

A troubadour (IPA: [t?ußa'ðu?], originally [t?ußa'ðo?]) was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350).

The troubadour school or tradition began in the eleventh century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread into Italy, Spain, and even Greece. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. Dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. After a "classical" period around the turn of the thirteenth century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the fourteenth century and eventually died out around the time of the Black Death (1348).

The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. Works can be grouped into three styles: the trobar leu (light), trobar ric (rich), and trobar clus (closed). Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the canso, but sirventes and tensos were especially popular in the post-classical period, in Italy, and among the female troubadours, the trobairitz. Contents [hide] 1 Etymology of name 1.1 Latin 1.2 Arabic 2 Origins 3 History 3.1 Early period 3.2 Spread (rayonnement) 3.3 Classical period 3.4 Albigensian Crusade and decline 3.5 Gay Saber and revival 4 Who they were 4.1 Status 4.2 Trobadors and joglars 4.3 Patronage 4.4 Vidas and razos 4.5 Podestà-troubadours 4.6 Trobairitz 4.7 Academics and city-dwellers: the Gay Science 5 Works 5.1 Schools and styles 5.2 Genres 5.3 Performance 5.4 Music 5.5 Grammars and dictionaries 6 Legacy 6.1 Transmission and critical reception 6.2 Table of parchment chansonniers 7 References 7.1 Notes 8 External links //

Etymology of name

The name "troubadour" and its cognates in other languages—trov(i)èro and then trovatore in Italian, trovador in Spanish, trobador in Catalan—are of disputed origin.

Latin

The English word "troubadour" comes by way of Old French from the Occitan word trobador, the oblique case of the nominative trobaire, a substantive of the verb trobar, which is derived from the hypothetical Late Latin *tropare, in turn from tropus, meaning a trope, from Greek t??p?? (tropos), meaning "turn, manner".[1] Another possible Latin root is turbare, to upset or (over)turn. Trobar is cognative with the modern French word trouver, meaning "to find". Whereas French trouver became trouvère, the nominative form, instead of the oblique trouveor or trouveur, the French language adopted the Occitan oblique case and from there it entered English.[1] The general sense of "trobar" in Occitan is "invent" or "compose" and this