Occitania, known today as the "south of France," had its own language and culture in the Middle Ages. Its troubadours created "courtly love" and a new poetic language in the vernacular, which were to influence European literature for centuries. There are many books on the troubadours, but this is the first comprehensive study of the society in which they lived. For readers of literature it offers a wide-ranging insight into the realities that lay behind the poetic mystique. For historians it opens up an important and neglected area of medieval Europe.

Fredric L. Cheyette's illustrated book is a biography of an extraordinary warrior woman and of a unique, vulnerable, doomed society. Throughout her long reign, viscountess Ermengard roamed Occitania receiving oaths of fidelity, negotiating treaties, settling disputes among the lords of her lands, and camping with her armies before the walls of besieged cities.

This book is a reference volume and a digest of more than a century of scholarly work on troubadour poetry. Written by leading scholars, it summarizes the current consensus on the various facets of troubadour studies. Standing at the beginning of the history of modern European verse, the troubadours were the prime poets and composers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the South of France. No study of medieval literature is complete without an examination of the courtly love which is celebrated in the elaborately rhymed stanzas of troubadour verse, creations whose words and melodies were imitated by poets and musicians all over medieval Europe. The words of about 2,500 troubadour songs have survived, along with 250 melodies, and all have come under intense scholarly scrutiny. This Handbook brings together the fruits of this scrutiny, giving teachers and students an overview of the fundamental issues in troubadour scholarship. All quotations are given in the original Old Occitan and in English. The editors provide a list of troubadour editions and an index, and each chapter includes a list of additional readings. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. This book is a reference volume and a digest of more than a century of scholarly work on troubadour poetry. Written by leading scholars, it summarizes the current consensus on the various facets of troubadour studies. Standing at the beginning

The dazzling culture of the troubadours - the virtuosity of their songs, the subtlety of their exploration of love, and the glamorous international careers some troubadours enjoyed - fascinated contemporaries and had a lasting influence on European life and literature. Apart from the refined love songs for which the troubadours are renowned, the tradition includes political and satirical poetry, devotional lyrics and bawdy or zany poems. It is also in the troubadour song-books that the only substantial collection of medieval lyrics by women is preserved. This book offers a general introduction to the troubadours. Its sixteen newly-commissioned essays, written by leading scholars from Britain, the US, France, Italy and Spain, trace the historical development and setting of troubadour song, engage with the main trends in troubadour criticism, and examine the reception of troubadour poetry. Appendices offer an invaluable guide to the troubadours, to technical vocabulary, to research tools and to surviving manuscripts.

The author offers an accessible overview of the vibrant personal and intellectual developments in the medieval court and monasteries during Eleanor of Aquitaine's lifetime. Primary documents, biographical material and thematic chapters bring this unique period to life. Eleanor of Aquitaine lived in a remarkable age. The 12th century saw significant advances in both the intellectual and emotional spheres. Scholars explored new areas of philosophy and science and also began to reflect on relationships and what it meant to be human and an individual. For the troubadours and the writers of the new romances, who composed in vernacular language, the focus of their works was the expression of personal feelings and the image of the feminine. Women had had more significant parts to play in the first millennium than in the second, because with the militarization of Europe and the emergence of universities, from which women were excluded, they lost much of their influence. This created an imbalance in society and it is within this context that Eleanor's life should be reviewed. The period is sometimes called the Twelfth Century Awakening due to the outpouring of extraordinary intellectual inquiry and discovery. Cathedral schools and universities, Islamic influence on European thought, the classical revival, vernacular literature, and Gothic architecture all exerted powerful pulls on the era's culture and politics. Accounts of Eleanor of Aquitaine's life provides a rare glimpse into women's lives during the medieval period, and though an admittedly extraordinary figure, we are able to draw some general conclusions about marriage and motherhood. Troubadours and courtly love, which revolved around declarations of service, devotion, and passion, and an emerging sense of the self. Thematic chapters hit the major topics, laying them out in clear and easy-to-follow writing. Nineteen biographical sketches bring to life the topics, and 15 primary documents, including songs, letters, and poems provide a close-up glimpse of how the people of the time saw their own world. Genealogical tables, maps, chronology, and a timeline provide useful and information quickly. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography and an index.

The lyrics of medieval "courtly love" songs are characteristically self-conscious. Giving Voice to Love investigates similar self-consciousness in the musical settings. Moments and examples where voice, melody, rhythm, form, and genre seem to comment on music itself tell us about musical responses to the courtly chanson tradition, and musical reflections on the complexity of self-expression.

Poet W. S. Merwin interweaves his own reminiscences with, "a chronicle of the lordly 12th-century bards who once ruled a world where kings were poets and poets kings."