Dante to Troubadour

In troubadour’s poetry, courtly love is the main theme and Dante’s work also contains its similar theme. The troubadours were highly effective at the height of the Middle Ages in southern France. Moreover, their songs of romantic love, with pleasing melodies and intricate verse forms, have inspired poets and songwriters ever since and Dante is one of them. As Bernart de Ventadorn expresses his feeling towards his beloved in the poem “The Skylark,” Dante has also written love poetry that was less centered on him yet more aimed at his beloved, Beatrice.

“Alas, I thought I’d grown so wise;

In love I had so much to learn:

I can’t control this heart that flies

To her who pays love no return.

Ay! Now she steals, through love’s sweet theft,

My heart, my self, my world entire;

She steals herself and I am left

Only this longing and desire.”

“The Skylark” written by Bernart de Ventadorn, he depicts the theme of courtly love that the poet regrets greatly that he cannot go any closer to his beloved. In the third line, “this heart” is connected to the skylark that also refers to his beloved. In the sixth line, Ventadorn constantly relates everything to her and says, “My heart; my self, my world entire.” He cannot live without her and the sequence of heart to self, self to world entire portrays his love towards her becoming larger and larger.

Interestingly, Dante also interprets courtly love into his poem. Many of his tropes and languages are correlated to his sacred love poetry. Although troubadour poetry presents courtly love through different poets, Dante solely writes upon Beatrice throughout the whole poem. “Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with the longing of the soul for divine splendor.” In other words, he admires Beatrice from a far distance and characterizes the beloved as a divine figure that is perfect and incomparable to other women. Overall, both Dante and troubadour poems have similarity in writing about courtly love and throughout Dante’s narrative in Vita Nuova, he tries to move past the troubadours by breaking down his personal love story with more details.