SOURCE: Egan, Margarita. Introduction to The Vidas of the Troubadours, translated by Margarita Egan, pp. xiii-xxxii. New York: Garland Publishing, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Egan provides an overview of the lives of the troubadours, including their structure, purpose, and perspective.

A noble and beautiful lady, a minstrel singing her praise, amorous intrigues and gossip in the castle of the wealthy feudal lords: such are typical elements of the world of the medieval love lyric which even today spark the imagination of writers and poets. Sources of these themes characteristic of troubadour love poetry can be traced to the princely circles of twelfth-century Southern France—the world of the Provençal poets. In later centuries, themes of troubadour love also appeared in prose, including the biographies of the troubadours, the vidas (lives), written in Old Provençal.

These texts, which have been little studied for their literary qualities, represent...