forms, especially sirventes and partimens; he is best known for his planh on the death of
Blacatz.
Elizabeth W.Poe
[See also: TROUBADOUR POETRY]
Sordello. Le poesie, ed. Marco Boni. Bologna: Palmaverde, 1954.
——. The Poetry of Sordello, ed. and trans. James J.Wilhelm. New York: Garland, 1987.
SOTTE CHANSON
. Popular in northern France from the 13th through the 15th century, the sotte chanson is
a systematic parody of the troubadour canso, in which fin’amor is reduced to animal lust;
the courtly lady, to a depraved shrew; the ethereal joy of love, to postprandial or
postorgasmic contentment. Two manuscripts preserve twentysix sottes chansons from the
13th and early 14th centuries. The genre had gained respectability by the 15th century, as
evidenced by its inclusion in several treatises on poetry. Froissart, Deschamps, and, most
notably, Villon, with his Ballade de la Grosse Margot, experimented with the genre.
Elizabeth W.Poe
[See also: FATRAS/FATRASIE; RESVERIE]
Bec, Pierre. La lyrique française au moyen-âge (XIIe–XIIIe siècles): contribution a une typologie
des genres poétiques médiévaux. 2 vols. Paris: Picard, 1977–78, Vol. 1: Études; Vol. 2: Textes.
SOTTIE
. Short comic plays in verse whose characters, usually five in number, are sots (“fools”)
or the equivalent. Approximately twenty-five comic plays from late-medieval France
have in their title the terms sots or sottie (or sotie), In addition, a number of plays called
farces by their earliest text are similar enough to be grouped with these sotties by modern
scholars. Although there is still disagreement on the number of sotties remaining, or even
on a definition of the genre, scholars generally accept about sixty plays as sotties. These
plays, whose average length is about 400 lines, date from ca. 1450–1550 and show a
great variety of dramatic techniques.
The sot (roughly translated “fool” or “jester”) was one of a large family of foolish
characters that fascinated the late Middle Ages and Renaissance: “Aujourd’uy Toult le
Monde est fol,” remarks a fool in Tout le Monde; the cry of Gringore’s Jeu du Prince des
Sots et Mère Sotte summons fifty-seven kinds of sots and sottes to the play. Fools
appeared in both serious and comic literature, at noble courts and the great fairs, in the
church holiday called the fête des fous, in art and music, and in the theater. By the end of
the 15th century, compagnies joyeuses, or societies of fools, had formed in the major
towns of France, made up of respectable citizens who assembled regularly to perform
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