''Cantiga de amor'' (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

and Galician) or ''cantiga d'amor'' (

Galician-Portuguese Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian languages, West Iberian Romance languag ...

), literally "love song", is a type of literary composition from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, typical of the medieval

Galician-Portuguese lyric In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, also known as ''trovadorismo'' in Portugal and ''trobadorismo'' in Galicia, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or ''lí ...

William IX of Aquitaine - BN MS fr 12473

A male-voiced love lyric, they on average have more complex forms, many never found in ''

cantigas de amigo ''Cantiga de amigo'' (, ) or ''cantiga d'amigo'' (Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peni ...

'' and some highly complex ones that were directly inspired by

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...

and

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

lyrics. On the other hand, ''cantigas de amor'' have a lack of variation in personae – with the man almost always speaking to or about a woman – and of situations. Usually the man is courting the woman, complaining that she is being cruel to him, despite his love and loyalty, though sometimes he is leaving or coming back, is away from her, and, seldom, the man gets so frustrated, angry or jealous that he gives up on her and even insults the woman.

Obscenity An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...

and open sexual references are

taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

on this lyric.Cohen, Rip (2009). “The Medieval Galician-Portuguese Lyric / The Secular Genres.” In Companion to Portuguese Literature. Ed. Stephen Parkinson, Cláudia Pazos Alonso and T. F. Earle. Warminster: Tamesis, pp. 25-40.
/ref> ''Cantigas de amor'' have a more complex

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

, and there is far more variation in the relationship between metrical and

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

units, with a much higher frequency of

enjambement In poetry, enjambment ( or ; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The or ...

. Scholars generally assume that the ''cantiga de amor'' comes from

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. Scholars such as Henry R. Lang have pointed to clear thematic parallels between the ''cantiga de amor'' and Occitan and Old French lyrics. Cesare De Lollis pointed two erotic genres in Galician-Portuguese before the first written texts, and concluding that the ''cantiga de amor'' was written before the first extant ''cantiga de amigo'', and that some elements of the ''cantiga de amor'' came before the Occitan and Old French influences. It is difficult to fully trace back the origins of the genre since it was highly influenced by foreign lyric compositions.

In popular culture

In 1991, the Brazilian rock band

Legião Urbana Legião Urbana (Portuguese for Urban Legion) was a Brazilian rock band formed in 1982 in Brasília, Distrito Federal. The band primarily consisted of Renato Russo (vocals, bass and keyboards), Dado Villa-Lobos (guitar) and Marcelo Bonfá (d ...

released their fifth album, ''V'', which opened with the song titled ''Love Song''. The song is the first stanza of ''Pois naci nunca vi Amor'', a ''cantiga de amor'' written by

Nuno Fernandes Torneol Nuno Fernandes Torneol was a Galician-Portuguese trovador. He probably worked in the middle of the thirteenth century at the courts of Ferdinand III and Alfonso X of Castile. In "De longas vias, mui longas mentiras", the only '' cantiga de escár ...

in the

13th century The 13th century was the century which lasted from January 1, 1201 ( MCCI) through December 31, 1300 ( MCCC) in accordance with the Julian calendar. The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan, which stretched from Eastern Asia to Eastern Eu ...

which tells the story of the character who since was born never saw love, but have heard about "him" and knows "he" wants to kill him. The character then begs his ''senhor'' ("lady", or his love interest) to show the killer or protect him.

References

Notes

{{Medieval-music-stub Galician-Portuguese Poetic forms Western medieval lyric forms

In popular culture

See also

References

Notes