PORTUGUESE TROUBADOURISM: THE RESIGNIFICATION OF THE ELEMENTS OF TROUBADOUR POETRY IN CONTEMPORARY POPULAR MUSIC

Abstract

This article investigates the permanence and resignification of constitutive elements of medieval troubadour poetry in contemporary popular music, considering it a privileged space for dialogue between tradition and innovation. From the perspective of long cultural durations, it seeks to understand how literary and affective conventions, developed between the 12th and 14th centuries, still inform modern and postmodern sensibilities, manifesting themselves in amorous and satirical narratives of song. The analysis is anchored in contributions from comparative literature, the semiotics of song, and performance theory, allowing us to observe the transposition of categories such as love of lonhe, amorous vassalage, coita, idealization of the domna, and satire, articulating them with discursive and musical practices of the 20th and 21st centuries. Methodologically, a qualitative approach is adopted, with an emphasis on textual, intertextual, and discursive analysis, based on a corpus composed of lyrics from Brazilian and international popular music, contrasted with troubadour songs of love, friendship, and scorn and malignity. The theoretical foundation is drawn from Eco (1989) to understand the reappropriations of the medieval in the postmodern; Zumthor (1993), who emphasizes orality and performativity as structuring elements of both medieval lyricism and song; Tatit (2002), who explores the semiotics of popular song; and Williams (1979), with his notion of structures of feeling, useful for understanding historical continuities in the experience of love. Also contributing are Spina (1996), Bosi (2000), Veloso (1984), and Bauman (2004), offering complementary readings on tradition, modernity, and cultural identity. The results indicate that medieval archetypes, far from being fossilized traces of a distant culture, are constantly updated, taking on new aesthetic and discursive guises in contemporary music. Thus, the study contributes to broadening our understanding of the mechanisms of intertemporal resignification between literature and music, in addition to reinforcing the importance of interdisciplinarity in literary and cultural studies.