Provençal poet, troubadour, and
master of the trobar clus, a poetic
style composed of complex metrics,
intricate rhymes, and words chosen more
for their sound than for their meaning.
Thought to have been born in Ribérac
(now in France), Arnaut was a nobleman
and a highly regarded traveling
troubadour. He is credited with
inventing the sestina, a lyrical form of
six six-line stanzas, unrhymed, with an
elaborate scheme of word repetition. His
skill with language was admired by
Petrarch and in the 20th century by Ezra
Pound and T.S. Eliot. His greatest
influence, however, was on Dante, who
imitated him and gave him a prominent
place in Purgatory as a model for the
vernacular poet. Arnaut’s speech in
Provençal is the only passage in the
Divine Comedy not in Italian.
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