Sordello, “Toz hom me van disen en esta maladia” (BdT 114a.1); Carlo d’Angiò, “Sordels diz mal de mi, e far no lo·m deuria” (BdT 437.37)

The paper provides a new commentary and a new edition of the brief exchange of coblas between Sordello and an unidentified respondent. The text is copied on folio 65r of Chansonnier P at the end of a long section of ‘coblas esparsas’ (ff. 55-66). It is made up of two stanzas of six lines each and from the thematic viewpoint offers a lament for the disappearance of a lord’s generosity. Although the text is rather marginal to Sordello’s lyric production, it nevertheless contains elements that are relevant to understanding the troubadour’s life and works. The poem, in fact, represents a literary transfiguration of the rift between Sordello and his respondent, identified as Charles I of Anjou, a rift that occurred after the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, when the king completed his plan to go beyond an ideological framework based on a courtly and chivalric outlook, of which the troubadour was the best representative at the time.