Sirvente

The sirvente or sirventès , or serventois in Language of oil, is a Poème in satirical , policy or moral matter which sang, in Langue of oc, the Troubadour S of the Provence Des.

Very in favor in poetry of Provence of, the sirvente is the first kind to be distinguished in this poetry. These satires, which were usually divided into Couplet S and were intended to be sung like the other poems, attack the prince S, with the Noblesse, the Clergé, the the Holy See itself, in general with the people, the events, the Mœurs.

The sirventes of Peire Cardenal paint corruption, the pride and the cupidity of the priests of the time with an alarming energy. Some parts of this kind acquired the importance of genuine political proclamations: it was, like qualified Villemain, “the diplomatic parts of time. ” Widespread in the castles, they announced with the Seigneur S the imminent Guerre S, the respective Grief S of the parties; they pushed with the Croisade, assisting thus strongly the Prédication S nuns, and became true battle songs, like the sirventes of the one of the Masters of the political sirventes, Bertran de Born, whose poetry approached topics sometimes very violent one as when he sings the joys of the war.

These compositions, in which there is more violence than of energy, teaches the ideas and the habits of the time which produced them, though it is necessary to take guard with the exaggerations there that personal resentments could introduce.

The sirventes were however not always satirical; they comprised all the subjects which did not belong to the songs of Amour.

The Trouvère S borrowed this kind of composition from the troubadours and gave him the name of “serventois” in language of oil.

Source

• Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 1885