Sordello
Encyclopedia
Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit (sometimes Sordell) was a 13th-century Lombard
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

 troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

, born in the municipality of Goito
Goito
Goito is a comune of Lombardy, Italy, in the Province of Mantua, from which it is some 20 km, on the road to Brescia. It is situated on the right bank of the Mincio River near the bridge.-History:...

 in the province of Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

. He is perhaps best remembered for the praise heaped on him by other poets: he is praised by Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

 in the De vulgari eloquentia
De vulgari eloquentia
De vulgari eloquentia is the title of an essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist of four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second. It was probably composed shortly after Dante went into exile; internal evidence points to a date between 1302 and 1305...

, and in the Purgatorio of The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...

is made the type of patriotic pride. He is the hero of the well-known poem Sordello
Sordello (poem)
Sordello is a narrative poem by the English poet Robert Browning. Worked on for seven years, and largely written between 1836 and 1840, it was published in March 1840...

by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

. He is also praised for his passion in Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's poem "Amor Intellectualis".

The real Sordello, so far as we have authentic facts about his life, hardly seems to justify these idealizations, though he was the most famous of the Italian troubadours. About 1220 he was in a tavern brawl in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

; and in 1226, while at the court of Richard of Bonifazio in Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

, he abducted his master's wife, Cunizza
Cunizza da Romano
Cunizza da Romano was an Italian noblewoman, the third daughter of Ezzelino II da Romano and Adelaide di Mangona, and sister to Ezzelino III and Alberico da Romano....

, at the instigation of her brother, Ezzelino da Romano
Ezzelino da Romano
Ezzelino da Romano was the name of various seignors of fiefs and cities in northern Italy starting from the 12th century AD.*The family was founded by Ecelo , who received the fiefs of Romano, including Romano d'Ezzelino and Onara, near Cittadella, Veneto*Ezzelino II il Balbo*Ezzelino II da Romano,...

. The scandal resulted in his flight (1229) to Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

, where he seems to have remained for some time. He entered the service of Charles of Anjou, and probably accompanied him (1265) on his Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 expedition; in 1266 he was a prisoner in Naples. The last documentary mention of him is in 1269, and he is supposed to have died in Provence. His appearance in Purgatory among the spirits of those who, though redeemed, were prevented from making a final confession and reconciliation by sudden death, suggests that he was murdered, although this may be Dante's own conjecture.

His didactic poem, L’ensenhamen d’onor, and his love songs and satirical pieces have little in common with Dante's presentation, but the invective against negligent princes which Dante puts into his mouth in the 7th canto of the Purgatorio is more adequately parallelled in his sirventes
Sirventes
The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

-planh
Planh
The planh or plaing is a funeral lament used by the troubadours, modeled on the medieval Latin planctus. It differed from the planctus in that it was intended for a secular audience...

(1237) on the death of his patron Blacatz
Blacatz
Blacatz, known in French genealogy as Blacas de Blacas III , was feudal lord of Aups and a troubadour. Sordello composed a lament on his death, inviting the kings of his time to share and eat the heart of Blacatz and thus acquire a portion of his courage.He was the father of the troubadour...

, where he invites the princes of Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...

 to feed on the heart of the hero.

Sordello is briefly referred to in Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

's 1951 novels Molloy
Molloy
Molloy may refer to:People:* Anthony James Pye Molloy, Royal Navy officer* Bobby Molloy, Irish politician* Georgiana Molloy, early settler and botanical collector in Western Australia* James Lynam Molloy, Irish poet, author and composer...

and Malone Dies
Malone Dies
Malone Dies is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as Malone Meurt, and later translated into English by the author....

. Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 also references him in the Cantos
The Cantos
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered...

. Numerous references occur in Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...

's novella By Night in Chile
By Night In Chile
By Night in Chile, written by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, was first published in 2000. Chris Andrews' English translation, which appeared in 2003 under New Directions, was also the first of Bolaño's novels to be published in English...

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK