Sonnet - Occitan Sonnet

Occitan Sonnet

The sole confirmed surviving sonnet in the Occitan language is confidently dated to 1284, and is conserved only in troubadour manuscript P, an Italian chansonnier of 1310, now XLI.42 in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. It was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d. This poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. Peter III and the Aragonese cause was popular in northern Italy at the time and Paolo's sonnet is a celebration of his victory over the Angevins and Capetians in the Aragonese Crusade:

Valenz Senher, rei dels Aragones
a qi prez es honors tut iorn enansa,
remembre vus, Senher, del Rei franzes
qe vus venc a vezer e laiset Fransa
Ab dos sos fillz es ab aqel d'Artes;
hanc no fes colp d'espaza ni de lansa
e mainz baros menet de lur paes:
jorn de lur vida said n'auran menbransa.
Nostre Senhier faccia a vus compagna
per qe en ren no vus qal duptar;
tals quida hom qe perda qe gazaingna.
Seigner es de la terra e de la mar,
per qe lo Rei Engles e sel d'Espangna
ne varran mais, si.ls vorres aiudar.
Valiant Lord, king of the Aragonese
to whom honour grows every day closer,
remember, Lord, the French king
that has come to find you and has left France
With his two sons and that one of Artois;
but they have not dealt a blow with sword or lance
and many barons have left their country:
but a day will come when they will have some to remember.
Our Lord make yourself a company
in order that you might fear nothing;
that one who would appear to lose might win.
Lord of the land and the sea,
as whom the king of England and that of Spain
are not worth as much, if you wish to help them.

An Occitan sonnet, dated to 1321 and assigned to one "William of Almarichi", is found in Jean de Nostredame and cited in Giovanni Crescembeni, Storia della volgar Poesia. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory. Its authenticity is dubious. There are also two poorly-regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano.

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Famous quotes containing the word sonnet:

    “Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)