Alcune riflessioni sul rapporto tra lirica provenzale e pensiero monastico nel secolo XII

The paper sheds light on some textual, historical and cultural clues witnessing the complex web of relationship that binds the lyrical experience of the troubadours – as well as the very concept of the fin’amor – to the monastic philosophy of the twelfth century, with a particular reference to the Cistercians and the thoughts of Saint Bernard. In some ways, in fact, the Occitan erotic literature makes use of conceptions proper to the mystical theology, declining them in profane perspectives; this last one, in its turn, freely draws on the typical language of sensuality and eroticism as never before, in order to define itself. At the basis of that fruitful osmosis between two apparently distant cultural systems, some of the historical and social factors that characterized the “Renaissance of the twelfth century” clearly emerge.