Medieval miniature of the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
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A damma ch’a l’à dæto o legnetto – in zeneise

The lady who turned down her suitor – in Genoese

Around 1190 Genoese makes its literary debut – to turn down a troubadour.

Around 1190 the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras composed "Domna, tant vos ai preiada", a bilingual débat: he courts in Occitan, the language of poetry; she, a Genoese lady, turns him down in the language of home: "Jujar, voi no se’ corteso" – minstrel, you are no courtly man.

It is one of the very first appearances of any Italo-Romance vernacular in literature, decades before the Sicilian School. And not in a walk-on part: line after line, Genoese holds its own against the most prestigious poetic language in Europe. That lady’s voice is the literary birth certificate of Genoese.

Bibliography

  1. Fiorenzo Toso, La letteratura ligure in genovese e nei dialetti locali. Profilo storico e antologia, vol. I, Le origini e il Duecento, Le Mani, Recco 2009, pp. 104–112, in part. pp. 110–111.
  2. Fiorenzo Toso, «Il genovese: un profilo storico», in Fiorenzo Toso e Giustina Olgiati (a cura di), Il genovese. Storia di una lingua, Sagep, Genova 2017, p. 19.
  3. Alessandro Guasoni, “Origins of the Ligurian language”, in Antologia da lettiatua ligure, Conseggio pe-o patrimònio linguistico ligure, 2024–.

Image: Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain