Title:
Alternate names/spellings: de Riberac
Dates: 1189 - 1189 (Dates are approximate. )
Arnaut Daniel (de Riberac) (fl. 12th c.), a troubadour, was praised by Dante as "il miglior fabbro" (the better craftsman/creator, literally "the better smith") and called "Grand Master of Love" by Petrarch. In the twentieth century he was lauded as the greatest poet to have ever lived by Ezra Pound in his work The Spirit of Romance. According to one vida, Arnaut was born of a noble family at the castle of Riberac in Perigord; however, the scant contemporary sources point to him being a jester with pernicious economic troubles. He is credited as the inventor of the sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same end words repeated in every stanza, though arranged in a different and intricate order. Sixteen of his poems survive, one of which with a melody that was composed about a century after his death.