Topic: Medieval Provence and Italy.  By 1170, poets such as Jaufrè
Rudel and Bernart de Ventadorn had codified the motifs and language
that would become the basis for European love lyric. Before 1175
Peire d’Alvernhe writes about a Lombard who sings in “motz maribotz
e bastartz,” a reference to a mixture of Occitan and Italian. In
13th-c. Sicily, Occitan syntax still directly informs the prosody
and vocabulary of works by poets at the court of Federico II. For
Dante (DVE II vi), Occitan works of poets such as Giraut de Bornelh,
Folquet de Marseille, Arnaut Daniel, and Aimerics de Pegulha serve
as direct lyric models. In his Vies des plus célèbres et anciens
poètes provençaux, Jehan de Nostredame claims Petrarca as an
Occitan poet. The majority of the surviving manuscripts of Occitan
verse were produced in northern Italy, where Italian versification
was viewed as a natural continuation of the literary heritage of
Provençal lyric and the traditions of the novas, vidas
and razos.

This course studies the linguistic, thematic and material links
between Occitan and early Italian literary production, from Bernart
de Ventadorn to Guittone d’Arezzo and Dante’s early poetry
(including the Vita nova). Jointly offered with MEST M 502.