The ''descort'' () was a form and
genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
of
Old Occitan
Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label= Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Old ...
lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...
used by
troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairi ...
s. It was heavily discordant in verse form and/or feeling and often used to express disagreement. It was possibly invented by
Garin d'Apchier when he wrote ''Quan foill'e flors reverdezis'' (only the first two lines survive); the invention is credited to him by a
vida, and these are unreliable.
Gautier de Dargies imported the ''descort'' into
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 intellig ...
and wrote and composed three.
Unlike the
canso, the most common open poetic form of the troubadours and the template upon which most genres were built, the descort is made of stanzas with a variable number of lines, and of lines with a variable number of syllables. Whereas the different stanzas of a canso usually share at least some of the rhymes, the rhymes of a descort are usually used within a single stanza and then discarded. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras brings this to the extreme by actually using different languages in each stanza. This made the descort a more challenging piece to write, as its irregular nature forced the troubadour to always write a new melody.
List of ''descorts''
References
{{authority control
Occitan literary genres
Western medieval lyric forms
Old Occitan literature