Complainte

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The Complainte ( French complainte "Klage") is a lyrical genre of medieval French and Provencal poetry. In contrast to the Planctus or Planh , it deals not only with death, but also with other subjectively experienced misfortunes. These can be general topics such as: B. a military defeat, the decline of morals or the loss of the Holy Sepulcher during the Crusades , but also a personal event such as unrequited love. The content was partly taken from biblical material or the medieval legend poetry. The Complainte was formally freely designed and therefore cannot be clearly separated from other contemporary genres such as Dit , Salut d'amour or Sirventes .

From French poetry are u. a. received the sermon of Robert Sainceriaux on the death of Louis VIII (1226), the Regres au roi Loëys on his successor Louis the Saint (1270) and some works by Rutebeuf , including the Complaintes d'outre-mer , which are related to contemporary crusade propaganda is to count.

In the Renaissance the tradition of the Complainte was taken up again. The authors were u. a. Clément Marot , Roger de Collerye and Pierre de Ronsard . From his experience of having been ousted from court as a poet of the Pleiade, the latter created very personal accusations such as the Complaintes contre Fortune (1559). Even Joachim du Bellay Complainte du désespéré (1559) as a complaint about the distance from home is one of this topic.

Thereafter the Complainte was used as a genre of aggressive political poetry by anonymous authors in the following epochs. B. in the religious wars of the 17th century, as a means of agitation in the Ancien Régime and during the French Revolution . These include both Complaintes on the death of Louis XIV and the revolutionaries Jean-Paul Marat and Jacques-René Hébert .

Geoffrey Chaucer introduced the Complainte to English literature as early as the 14th century when he wrote The Compleynt of Venus , a satirical complaint about his empty wallet. Edmund Spenser picked it up in his Complaints (1591) before it became a style model for Edward Young in the 18th century for all of Romanticism , which was able to poetically express Weltschmerz .

literature

  • John Peter: Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1956.
  • Monika Wodsak: The Complainte. On the history of a French popular genre (= Studia Romanica. 60). Winter, Heidelberg 1985 ISBN 3-533-03561-1 (also: Düsseldorf, University, dissertation).