genre Genre () is any style or form 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 fo ...

of the

troubadour A troubadour (, ; ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The tr ...

s, the or (; "lament") is a funeral

lament A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about something ...

for "a great personage, a protector, a friend or relative, or a lady."Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker, "Topoi", in F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis, eds., ''A Handbook of the Troubadours'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 421–440. Its main elements are expression of grief, praise of the deceased (

eulogy A eulogy (from , ''eulogia'', Classical Greek, ''eu'' for "well" or "true", ''logia'' for "words" or "text", together for "praise") is a speech or writing in praise of a person, especially one who recently died or retired, or as a term o ...

) and prayer for his or her soul.Patricia Harris Stäblein, "New Views on an Old Problem: The Dynamics of Death in the ", ''Romance Philology'' 35, 1 (1981): 223–234. It is descended from the medieval

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

.William D. Paden, "Planh/Complainte", in W. W. Kibler and G. A. Zinn, eds., ''Medieval France: An Encyclopedia'' (New York: Garland, 1995), pp. 1400–1401. The is similar to the in that both were typically

contrafacta In vocal music, contrafactum (or contrafact, pl. contrafacta) is "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music". The earliest known examples of this "lyrical adaptation" date back to the 9th century in Gregor ...

. They made use of existing melodies, often imitating the original song even down to the rhymes. The most famous of all, however,

Gaucelm Faidit Gaucelm Faidit ( literally "Gaucelm the Dispossessed" c. 1156 – c. 1209) was a troubadour, born in Uzerche, in the Limousin (province), Limousin, from a family of knights in service of the count of Turenne. He travelled widely in France, Sp ...

's lament on the death of King

Richard the Lionheart Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'st ...

in 1199, was set to original music. Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker identifies three types of : "the moralizing ", in which the expression of grief is a point of departure for social criticism; "the true lament", in which personal grief is central; and "the courtly ", in which the impact of the death on the court is emphasised.

Alfred Jeanroy Alfred Jeanroy (5 July 1859 – 13 March 1953) was a French linguist. Jeanroy was a leading scholar studying troubadour poetry, publishing over 600 works. He established an influential view of the second generation of troubadours divided into tw ...

considered that the common denunciation of the evils of the present age was a feature that distinguished the from the . In the conventions of the genre, the subject's death is announced by the simple words ("is dead"). By the 13th century, the placement of these words within the poem was fixed: it occurred in the seventh or eighth line of the first stanza. It is perhaps an indication of the sincerity of their grief that the troubadours rarely praised the successors of their patrons in the . There are at least forty-four surviving .Élisabeth Schulze-Busacker, ‘La Complainte des morts dans la littérature occitane’ in Claude Sutto (ed.), ''Le Sentiment de la mort au moyen âge: Études présentées au Cinquième colloque de l'Institut d'études médiévales de l'Université de Montréal'' (Montréal: Aurore, 1979), 230–48. The earliest is that by Cercamon on the death of Duke

William X of Aquitaine William X (Occitan: ''Guillém X''; 1099 – 9 April 1137), called the Saint, was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou (as William VIII) from 1126 to 1137. Early life William was the son of William IX by his second wife P ...

in 1137. The latest is an anonymous lament on the death of King

Robert of Naples Robert of Anjou (), known as Robert the Wise (; 1276 – 20 January 1343), was King of Naples, titular King of Jerusalem and Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of Italian politics of his time. He was the thir ...

in 1343. The was regarded by contemporaries as a distinct genre and is mentioned in the (1290s) and the (1341).

Chronological table of

The following table lists 45 .

Chronological table of

References

Further reading