Sirventese
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Sirventese
The ''sirventes'' or ''serventes'' (), sometimes translated as "service song", was a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry practiced by the troubadours. The name comes from ''sirvent'' ('serviceman'), from whose perspective the song is allegedly written. Sirventes usually (possibly, always) took the form of parodies, borrowing the melody, metrical structure and often even the rhymes of a well-known piece to address a controversial subject, often a current event. The original piece was usually a canso, but there are sirventes written as contrafacta of (at least) sestinas and pastorelas. They were always opinionated, being either highly complimentary or, more often, oozing with vitriol; however, these features are not unique to the sirventes, so a piece can be positively identified as one only if its nature is explicitly stated in the text (which it often is) or the original piece it is based on has been preserved (which is also often the case: for a parody to work, it had to target ...
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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 forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, a ...
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Simony
Simony () is the act of selling church offices and roles or sacred things. It is named after Simon Magus, who is described in the Acts of the Apostles as having offered two disciples of Jesus payment in exchange for their empowering him to impart the power of the Holy Spirit to anyone on whom he would place his hands. The term extends to other forms of trafficking for money in "spiritual things". Origin The purchase or sale of ecclesiastical office was condemned from the fifth century, but it was only in the sixth century that it was associated with the figure of Simon Magus in the Book of Acts. Key in making this association was Pope Gregory I, who labelled such exchanges as the "simoniac heresy". Simony in the Middle Ages Although considered a serious offense against canon law, simony is thought to have become widespread in the Catholic Church during the 9th and 10th centuries. In the eleventh century, it was the focus of a great deal of debate. Central to this debat ...
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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 intelligible yet diverse, spoken in the northern half of France. These dialects came to be collectively known as the , contrasting with the in the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île de France region; this dialect was a predecessor to Modern French. Other dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms (Poitevin-Saintongeais, Gallo, Norman, Picard, Walloon, etc.), each with its own linguistic features and history. The region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the Kingdom of France and its vassals (including parts of the Angevin Empire, which during the 12th century remained under Anglo-Norman rul ...
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Richard I Of England
Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period. He was the third of five sons of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and seemed unlikely to become king, but all his brothers except the youngest, John, predeceased their father. Richard is known as Richard Cœur de Lion ( Norman French: ''Le quor de lion'') or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior. The troubadour Bertran de Born also called him Richard Oc-e-Non (Occitan for ''Yes and No''), possibly from a reputation for terseness. By the age of 16, Richard had taken command of his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father. Richard was an important Christian commander during the Third Crusade, ...
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Langues D'oïl
The ''langues d'oïl'' (; ) are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. These belong to the larger category of Gallo-Romance languages, which also include the historical languages of east-central France and western Switzerland, southern France, portions of northern Italy, and the Val d'Aran in Spain. Linguists divide the Romance languages of France, and especially of Medieval France, into two main geographical subgroups: the ''langues d'oïl'' to the North, and the ''langues d'oc'' in the Southern half of France. Both groups are named after the word for "yes" in them or their recent ancestral languages. The most common modern ''langue d'oïl'' is standard French, in which the ancestral "oïl" has become "oui". Terminology ''Langue d'oïl'' (in the singular), ''Oïl dialects'' and ''Oïl languages'' (in the plural) designate the ancie ...
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Catalan Language
Catalan (; autonym: , ), known in the Valencian Community and Carche as ''Valencian'' (autonym: ), is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands. It also has semi-official status in the Italian comune of Alghero. It is also spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking territories are often called the or "Catalan Countries". The language evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees. Nineteenth-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, culminating in the early 1900s. Etymology and pronunciation The word ''Catalan'' is derived from the territorial name of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology. The main theory suggests that (Latin ...
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Peire D'Alvernha
Peire d'Alvernhe or d'Alvernha (''Pèire'' in modern Occitan; b. c. 1130) was an Auvergnat troubadour (active 1149–1170) with twenty-oneGaunt and Kay, 287. or twenty-fourEgan, 72.Aubrey, ''The Music of the Troubadours'', 8. surviving works. He composed in an "esoteric" and "formally complex" style known as the ''trobar clus''. He stands out as the earliest troubadour mentioned by name in Dante's ''Divine Comedy''. Life According to his ''vida'', Peire was a burgher's son from the Diocese of Clermont.Egan, 71. As testified to by his ''vida'', his popularity was great within his lifetime and afterwards. Said to be handsome, charming, wise, and learned, he was "the first good inventor of poetry to go beyond the mountains" (i.e. the Pyrenees) and travel in Spain. He passed his time in Spain at the court of Alfonso VII of Castile Alphons (Latinized ''Alphonsus'', ''Adelphonsus'', or ''Adefonsus'') is a male given name recorded from the 8th century (Alfonso I of Asturias, r. ...
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Pons De Mataplana
The pons (from Latin , "bridge") is part of the brainstem that in humans and other bipeds lies inferior to the midbrain, superior to the medulla oblongata and anterior to the cerebellum. The pons is also called the pons Varolii ("bridge of Varolius"), after the Italian anatomist and surgeon Costanzo Varolio (1543–75). This region of the brainstem includes neural pathways and tracts that conduct signals from the brain down to the cerebellum and medulla, and tracts that carry the sensory signals up into the thalamus.Saladin Kenneth S.(2007) Anatomy & physiology the unity of form and function. Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill Structure The pons is in the brainstem situated between the midbrain and the medulla oblongata, and in front of the cerebellum. A separating groove between the pons and the medulla is the inferior pontine sulcus. The superior pontine sulcus separates the pons from the midbrain. The pons can be broadly divided into two parts: the basilar part of the pons (ventral p ...
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Guilhem De Berguedan
Guillem de Berguedà (''c''.1130–1195/6; ''fl''.1138–1192), or Guilhem de Berguedan in Occitan, was a Catalan troubadour and viscount of Berguedà. He was the most prolific Catalan poet of the twelfth century, though he composed in Occitan, and thirty-one of his poems survive. Most are ''sirventes'', "typically violent and obscene, reflecting his character and turbulent life,"Cf. Gaunt and Kay. but there are a few ''cansos''. Most of what is known about him derives from his ''vida'' and his songs. The viscounty of Berguedà was a fief of the County of Cerdagne and the first mention of its dates to the tenth century. In 1131 Guillem's father (also Guillem) appears for the first time in a document as rendering homage to Huguet de Mataplana, from he held a fief. It is not until 1138 that the troubadour Guillem first appears in documents, as a child at the side of his father. Later writings indicate that he had three younger brothers, Raymond, Berengar, and Bernard. Some ...
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Sestina
A sestina (, from ''sesto'', sixth; Old Occitan: ''cledisat'' ; also known as ''sestine'', ''sextine'', ''sextain'') is a fixed verse, fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern. The invention of the form is usually attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour of 12th-century Provence, and the first sestinas were written in the Occitan language of that region. The form was cultivated by his fellow troubadours, then by other poets across Continental Europe in the subsequent centuries; they contributed to what would become the "standard form" of the sestina. The earliest example of the form in English appeared in 1579, though they were rarely written in Britain until the end of the 19th century. The sestina remains a popular poetic form, and many sestinas continue to be written by contemporary p ...
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Arnaut Daniel
Arnaut Daniel (; fl. 1180–1200) was an Occitan troubadour of the 12th century, praised by Dante as "the best smith" (''miglior fabbro'') and called a "grand master of love" (''gran maestro d'amore'') by Petrarch. In the 20th century he was lauded by Ezra Pound in '' The Spirit of Romance'' (1910) as the greatest poet to have ever lived. Life According to one biography, Daniel was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribérac in Périgord; however, the scant contemporary sources point to him being a jester with pernicious economic troubles: Raimon de Durfort calls him "a student, ruined by dice and shut-the-box". Work and style The dominant characteristic of Daniel's poetry is an extreme obscurity of thought and expression, a style called ''trobar clus'' ('hermetic verse'). He belonged to one school of troubadour poets that sought to make their meanings difficult to understand through the use of unfamiliar words and expressions, enigmatical allusions, complicated meters a ...
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Peire Cardenal
Peire Cardenal (or Cardinal) (c. 1180 – c. 1278) was a troubadour (fl. 1204 – 1272) known for his satirical ''sirventes'' and his dislike of the clergy. Ninety-six pieces of his remain, a number rarely matched by other poets of the age.Aubrey, 23–4. Peire Cardenal was born in Le Puy-en-Velay, apparently of a noble family; the family name Cardenal appears in many documents of the region in the 13th and 14th centuries. He was educated as a canon, which education directed him to vernacular lyric poetry and he abandoned his career in the church for "the vanity of this world", according to his '' vida''.Egan, 74. The author of Peire's ''vida'' is known: Miquel de la Tor. Peire began his career at the court of Raymond VI of Toulouse—from whom he sought patronage—and a document of 1204 refers to a ''Petrus Cardinalis'' as a scribe of Raymond's chancery. At Raymond's court, however, he appears to have been known as Peire del Puoi or Puei (french: Pierre du Puy). Aroun ...
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