Sordello [key], c.1180–1269?, Italian troubadour. A life of brawling and intrigue took him to Provence, where he served at court. Like other Italian troubadours before him, he wrote in Provençal (see Italian literature). His best-known poem, Serventese (1237), is a bitter lament on the death of his patron. Dante gave Sordello a patriot's status in Purgatorio, VI, 73. Robert Browning used him as the subject of a long poem, Sordello (1840).
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