In Occitan and Old French lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the amorous tryst is a major locus of poetic invention, one that elicited a considerable range of conventional attitudes. If the assignation has yet to occur, the lyric voice may desire it fervently, or see it as an indefinitely deferred goal or an impossibility to be relinquished in abject resignation. If the exquisite moment finally arrives, the poet may evoke the couple's ephemeral bliss or their protection by vigilant watchmen outside their chamber. The tryst remembered may be haloed in a nostalgic afterglow, or inspire bitter regrets that no more will follow, or dejection over imminent departure for remote, hostile lands. And so on. These and many other perspectives on the tryst appear in medieval love lyrics, while countless variants lend nuance to each one, thus making this imaginary, sensual yet also spiritual event a powerful generator of poetic craftsmanship. In these marvels of metric and strophic design, in which tensions among various orders of duty and desire struggle for dominance, the components of eminently conventional stylistic registers are incessantly metamorphosed within the relatively conservative mouvance of troubadour and trouvère lyric.

Old French narrative poets also saw inventive potential in the tryst. It offered them a basic situation imbued with immense powers of fascination, one fraught with conflict and suspense as well as a substantial archive of poetic figures.