Grand chant

The grand chant (courtois) or, in modern French, (grande) chanson courtoise or chanson d'amour, was a genre of Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères. It was adopted from the Occitan "canso" of the troubadours, but scholars stress that it was a distinct genre. The predominant theme of the "grand chant" was courtly love, but topics were more broad than in the "canso", especially after the thirteenth century. The monophonic "grand chant" of the High Middle Ages (12th–13th centuries) was in many respects the predecessor of the polyphonic "chanson" of the Late Middle Ages (14th–15th centuries).