Persian Court Poetry (10th — 12th Centuries) and Troubadour Lyrics (12th — 13th Centuries): a Comparative Analysis of Poetics

The article is devoted to the identification of common poetic characteristics of the Persian court poets (10th — 12th centuries) and the Provencal troubadours (12th — 13th centuries). The concepts of ‘poet’ and ‘poetry’, which helped the representatives of two poetic traditions to formulate their views on the essence of literary work and to assert the novelty and originality of their writings were selected for comparison purposes. The article presents the examples of arguments about a poet’s skill as a professional craft, contained in medieval Arabic treatises on poetics, on which the Persian court poets of the 10th — 12th centuries relied in their literary practice. Quotations from the works of Persian panegyrists testify to their high level of creative awareness and to the emergence of a professional environment where the ideas of the poet’s skill as a craft requiring mastery of certain techniques were cultivated. In parallel to the above quotes, similar statements by troubadours about the essence of professional skill are presented. Numerous examples attest to the competitive nature of the entire literary practice during the period of the predominantly traditionalist type of artistic consciousness. Normative poetics created specific conditions for the perception of the concepts of novelty and tradition. The common features of the poetics of the Persian court poets and troubadours are determined by the typological generality of the literary canon laws, on which their work is based.