Sordello da Goito and His Fame: Rumors, Politics, and Communities in Thirteenth-Century Europe

Throughout his life, the troubadour Sordello da Goito employed poetry to establish and reinvent his public image, and the same medium was used by other troubadours to react — positively or negatively — to his self-representation. This article examines the transformations of Sordello's public image over time, their impact on poetry and, in turn, the influence of poetry on his real-life social standing. It does so by examining a variety of poems by and about Sordello through which his moral authority and position at court were established, accepted, or defended. New interpretations of poems BEdT 76,12, 330,14, and 437,34 are particularly exemplary of these phenomena. In doing so, the article shows how Sordello's public image changed over time from satirist, to kidnapper of women, to widely recognized chivalric moralist. Sordello's career offers an example of the complex intertwining of poetry and social identity that characterized troubadour poetry throughout its history and of the role played by poetic communities in confirming or challenging individual poets’ claims of authority.