SOURCE: Briffault, Robert S. Introduction to The Troubadours, edited by Lawrence F. Koons, pp. 3-23. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1965.

In the following essay, Briffault argues that Provençal troubadour poetry led developing Western literature away from a Greco-Roman course.

While in the North, the tales and sagas of Celtic paganism were flowering into the romances of chivalry which captured the imagination of the Middle Ages, a literary form equally alien to the classical tradition was unfolding in southern France. The poetry of the troubadours answered the mood of a feudal society newly awakened to a sense of its native uncouthness by contact with the luxury of the Orient, and beginning to advance claims to the airs and graces of ornate leisures. Throughout Europe blew the aura of a new lyrical inspiration. Provençal song brought fertility to the flinty soil of the vernacular tongues, and stood as...