Phd in STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL PHILOLOGY, PALEOGRAPHY, ROMANCE
STUDIES

Thesis title: Dal canto al racconto: percorsi sintattici e stilistici dalla lirica trobadorica alla prosa di vidas e razos (XII-XIV secolo)

This study investigates the syntactic and stylistic pathways of the Occitan troubadour tradition, conceiving troubadour lyric and the prose of the vidas and razos as two distinct yet deeply interconnected discursive genres. Within the theoretical framework of Diskursive Traditionen, these texts are approached not merely as literary products, but as historically grounded models of communication, characterized by specific formal conventions and pragmatic functions. Through a systematic syntactic analysis of a corpus consisting of seven representative troubadours and the entire vidas and razos repertoire, the research combines diachronic and synchronic perspectives, highlighting affinities and differences in clause architecture, constituent order, strategies of syntactic linkage and the interplay between linguistic segmentation and metrical constraints. The methodology integrates quantitative and qualitative tools, supported by extensive digital annotation and statistical comparison, to identify recurrent patterns and significant anomalies. This perspective makes it possible to bring to light common dynamics shared by the two textual typologies, revealing areas of contact that reflect a shared cultural and discursive background, especially in the tendency to make lyric poetry more interpretable in light of the “narrative compendium” function performed by the paratexts, which introduces syntactic continuity between the two genres. The interdiscursive dialogue between song and narrative, materially attested in the manuscript tradition, thus reveals the gradual construction of troubadour authorial identity and a distinctly medieval way of organizing discourse, poised between orality and writing, between poetic elegance and exegetical purpose.