Troubadour vs. Bard

Main Difference

The main difference between Troubadour and Bard is that the Troubadour is a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages and Bard is a professional poet in medieval Gaelic and British culture.

• Troubadour

  A troubadour (English: , French: [tʁubaduʁ]; Occitan: trobador, IPA: [tɾuβaˈðu]) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz.

  The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread to Italy and Spain. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. Dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. After the “classical” period around the turn of the 13th century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and around the time of the Black Death (1348) it died out.

  The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. Works can be grouped into three styles: the trobar leu (light), trobar ric (rich), and trobar clus (closed). Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the canso, but sirventes and tensos were especially popular in the post-classical period, in Italy and among the female troubadours, the trobairitz.

• Bard

  In medieval Gaelic and British culture, a bard was a professional story teller, verse-maker and music composer, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or noble), to commemorate one or more of the patron’s ancestors and to praise the patron’s own activities.

  Originally a specific, lower class of poet, contrasting with the higher rank known as fili in Ireland and Highland Scotland, with the decline of living bardic tradition in the modern period the term “bard” acquired generic meanings of an author or minstrel, especially a famous one. For example, William Shakespeare, and Rabindranth Tagore, are known as “the Bard of Avon” and “the Bard of Bengal” respectively.