Occitan literary genres

A sestina (, from sesto, sixth; Old Occitan: cledisat ; also known as sestine, sextine, sextain) is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.

The sirventes or serventes (), sometimes translated as "service song", was a genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry practiced by the troubadours.

Occitan prose form

A tenso (; ) is a style of troubadour song. It takes the form of a debate in which each voice defends a position; common topics relate to love or ethics. Usually, the tenso is written by two different poets, but several examples exist in which one of the parties is imaginary, including God (Peire de Vic), the poet's horse (Bertran Carbonel) or his cloak (Gui de Cavalhon). Closely related, and sometimes overlapping, genres include:

subgenre of Occitan lyric poetry

song style

thumb|Cercamon, [[troubadour and author of the earliest known planh]] A genre of the troubadours, the ' or ' (; "lament") is a funeral lament for "a great personage, a protector, a friend or relative, or a lady." Its main elements are expression of grief, praise of the deceased (eulogy) and prayer for his or her soul. It is descended from the medieval Latin .

thumb|upright|Marcabru The pastorela (, "little/young shepherdess") was an Occitan lyric genre used by the troubadours. It gave rise to the Old French pastourelle. The central topic was always the meeting of a knight with a shepherdess, which could lead to any of a number of possible conclusions. They were usually humorous pieces. The genre was allegedly invented by Cercamon, whose examples do not survive, and was most famously taken up by his (alleged) pupil Marcabru.

The descort () was a form and genre of Old Occitan lyric poetry used by troubadours. It was heavily discordant in verse form and/or feeling and often used to express disagreement. It was possibly invented by Garin d'Apchier when he wrote ''Quan foill'e flors reverdezis (only the first two lines survive); the invention is credited to him by a vida, and these are unreliable. Gautier de Dargies imported the descort'' into Old French and wrote and composed three.

single-stanza poem in troubadour poetry

A razo (, literally "cause", "reason") was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A razo normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of a vida (a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and the boundary between the two genres was never sharp.

thumb|right|Ensenhame personified as a king in the 14th-century ''Breviari d'amor of Matfre Ermengau An '''' (, or ) was an Old Occitan didactic (often lyric) poem associated with the troubadours. As a genre of Occitan literature, its limits have been open to debate since it was first defined in the 19th century. The word has many variations in old Occitan: , , , and .