The Troubadours: An Introduction [Paperback]

Simon Gaunt (Editor), Sarah Kay (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0521574730 | ISBN-13: 978-0521574730 0

This book offers a general introduction to the world of the troubadours. Its sixteen chapters, newly commissioned from leading scholars in Britain, the United States, France, Italy and Spain, trace the development of troubadour song (including music), engage with the main trends in troubadour scholarship, and examine the reception of troubadour poetry in manuscripts and in Northern French romance. A series of appendices offer an invaluable guide to more than fifty troubadours, to technical vocabulary, to research tools and to surviving manuscripts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"All readers of troubadour poetry can profit from this well-devised, stimulating book." Speculum

Language Notes

Text: English --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521574730
• ISBN-13: 978-0521574730
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #745,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rebuttal to Previous Review, December 23, 2005

By 

Andrew M. Lemons "Andrew Lemons" (Salt Lake City, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Troubadours: An Introduction (Paperback)

I am a student of one of the contributors to this volume, and work indirectly with a few others. I must offer some response to the previous review before too many would-be readers are needlessly turned away from a very useful book.

I agree with the previous reviewer on one point only, that this book should not be called an "Introduction." For the newcomer to Troubadour lyric, I recommend one of the many anthologies with facing-page translation. The brand new "Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours, a Bilingual Edition" by Kehew is quite nice. Ezra Pound wrote some excellent essays on the Troubadours in this "Literary Essays." And if you REALLY want to dive in, try William Paden's "Introduction to Old Occitan," and learn to read the Troubadours in the original.

As to the present volume. The previous review hammers to death the point that the academic English of this book is too recondite. I disagree. The writing style of these essays, though academic, is still accessible to anyone who has already had some experience with the Troubadours. After all, every profession has its own dialect that takes getting used to.

Far from "sterilizing" the topic, these essays give a sample of the very latest ideas about the Troubadours. No, it is not a good introduction for the first-time reader of the Troubadours. But it is a wonderful introduction for an already interested reader who wants to cut deeper into the subject. The table of contents reads like a who's who of the best contemporary thinkers on Provencal poetry. Their work is the product of decades of careful research, is always valuable, and often poignant.

These scholars aren't trying to hide information from anybody. On the contrary, these essays open the door to a deeper level of interpretation for those who wish to see below the surface. As to the surface, as I have said, true introductions are readily available.

I don't recommend you pick up this book before you read (and thereby see if you even like) the Troubadours themselves. Nor do I recommend you open to page one and "slog through" to the bitter end. Instead, scan the titles of the essays and read the ones which deal with questions you've encountered in your readings as they arise. These essays are short, so read slowly and carefully. And trust that these authors, who are as "consummately human" as the Troubadours themselves, have spent as much time in their lives reading the lyrics as the Troubadours spent writing them. They know what they're talking about.

15 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling, Romantic Topic Sterilized by "Scholars", October 7, 2003

By 

First Things First "captainreflection" (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Troubadours: An Introduction (Paperback)

This book is blatantly misnamed. It is not an "introduction" to the troubadours, at least not according to MY understanding of that word. It is a collection of 16 essays written by "scholars." Although the first two or three essayists do a reasonable, if sterile, job of grounding us in the times and places of the troubadours - the courtly poets and singers of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, nearly every subsequent essay is a pedantic, sesquipedalian harangue, each one seeming to focus on a more arcane and esoteric substratum of troubadour minutiae than its predecessor. At times, the language employed by a few of the essayists is completely over the top, even by scholarly standards. One could easily get the impression while trying to plow through several exasperating chapters, that the last thing their authors would ever deign to give us - mere lay readers after all - is a simple, reasonably compelling word picture of the human beings who inhabited the courts and wrote and sang and preserved troubadour poetry. (Now that we're dreaming, some more descriptions of those courts would surely have been interesting and improved our knowledge of the places where courtly poetry was a form of social currency. And how about sharing a few more stories of the troubadours themselves and the ladies to whom they sang, and their contemporaries whom they debated and befriended, and what they wore and what they ate and if anyone has ever tried to record the imperfectly preserved melodies in the manuscripts on modern recording equipment...) Not only is so much missing which could warm us up to the whole notion of courtly love poetry and its cousins, the debate poems, bragging poems and humorous poems, much of the book's information is for all intents and purposes, HIDDEN, yes hidden behind a form of English spoken literally nowhere on earth except the musty halls of academia... places where "experts" akin to our authors spend their days thinking up new ways to keep their knowledge to themselves. One is reminded of the days when the Bible was available only in Latin, and hence, only priests and their ilk were in sole control of what information they chose to dipense or not to dispense. A few of these essayists are such poor lay communicators that it wouldn't surprise me if their secret wish is to take this information to their graves with them. Note the following, one of my favorites: "For her the ludic is an escape from the self-satisfied 'seriousness of meaning' (with its implications of univocal truth) that, according to Irigaray, characterises the masculine imaginary. By exceeding the limits of that culturally constructed and imposed imaginary, she seeks to accomplish her ludic goal of discovering a possible place for the female imaginary, a space where she can undertake her own language work." Remember folks, we're reading this book because we want to be introduced to the lives and times of court poets, musicians and singers. In case you're wondering...yes, I finished the book. I slogged through every last page. I have a personal agreement with myself not to let books like this, and the people responsible for them, get the better of me. In the end, I understood all of it, at least that portion which was understandable. And yes, when all is said and done, there is much here to learn and know... a huge amount even. But an introduction it's not, and the fact that we are deprived of a layman's foundation before being placed on a mental ski-lift to Mount Everest left me feeling bamboozled, and deflated at the prospect of another sterile "scholarly" read. So, readers beware!... the poetry, melodies and legacy of the troubadours is such a beautiful, romantic, and consummately human topic, that you might want to seriously consider bypassing this book's trip to the academic embalming table, and seek information elsewhere.