Lyric Poetry to Troubadour's Poetry

One of the most distinguishing facts of lyric poetry and troubadour poetry is that they are written in different time. However, we are aware of that any poets are influenced by their predecessors; therefore, it is possible that poems share similar features such as structure, writing style, tone, theme, and etc. To recap, by definition, lyric poetry is “a type of emotion songlike poetry, distinguished from dramatic and narrative poetry.” In other words, lyric poetry is a form of a poetry, which expresses personal emotions and feelings, typically spoken/written in first person. For instance, Roman poets are heavily influenced by the Greek lyric poets and it is often referenced back to the Greek lyrics. The Romans redirected Greek lyric’s form (elegy, iambus, epithalamia, etc) or the content (love, life, death, etc). Moreover, there are few troubadour poetries that are also written in song-type form, which is very similar to the Greek poetry that accompanies lyre.

“The predominant troubadour song type was, naturally enough, a form used to express sentiments of refined love, the canso” and one of the great examples is Bernart de Ventadorn’s “The Skylark” (Kehew, 6). In this lyric, a theme of courtly love is depicted that the poet regrets greatly that he cannot go any closer to his beloved. Moreover, he writes this poem in first person point of view most of the time as he expresses his feelings towards beloved. In the first stanza, from poet’s point of view, the poem opens by how freedom is portrayed in skylark and expresses the jealousy of freedom for others. Most importantly, he describes his relation to his beloved. “I marvel that desire does not / Consume away this heart of mine,” “I thought I’d grown so wise.” “I am left / Only this longing and desire” and other lines are written from his point of view. In addition, not only “The Skylark” contains these kind of features but also in “You’ve Asked, My Lords, for Song” depicts a song-type poem that has rhyming words, metaphors, and rhythms that has a correlation to Greek lyric poems.

Reference

1.     www.dictionary.com

2.     Lark in the Morning