The Troubadours: An Introduction

Rating:
Summary: A good scholarly book
Review: I read essays from this book for an Old Provencal class last semester. It's certainly academic, but I found it interesting, thought-provoking, and even fun to read. It didn't take any of the romance out of troubadour poetry for me, and I think it's only sterile for people who find academic literary criticism in general to be sterile. It's just a matter of taste. I don't think the language was intended to hide information from anyone, but the writers do use the slightly specialized vocabulary that is normal for books of this sort. The purpose of this specialization is not to make non-academics feel excluded but to allow writers to express ideas more precisely; a book like this would be much longer if Sarah Kay et al had to reinvent the wheel with every essay rather than use scholarly terms with meanings and associations specific to criticism.
As a student and enthusiast of troubadour poetry I found this book helpful, not to mention enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone studying troubadours and troubadour poetry and to anyone interested in the subject who doesn't mind a scholarly method of writing. Just read the sample pages and see if it's your cup of tea.

Rating:
Summary: A good scholarly book
Review: I read essays from this book for an Old Provencal class last semester. It's certainly academic, but I found it interesting, thought-provoking, and even fun to read. It didn't take any of the romance out of troubadour poetry for me, and I think it's only sterile for people who find academic literary criticism in general to be sterile. It's just a matter of taste. I don't think the language was intended to hide information from anyone, but the writers do use the slightly specialized vocabulary that is normal for books of this sort. The purpose of this specialization is not to make non-academics feel excluded but to allow writers to express ideas more precisely; a book like this would be much longer if Sarah Kay et al had to reinvent the wheel with every essay rather than use scholarly terms with meanings and associations specific to criticism.
As a student and enthusiast of troubadour poetry I found this book helpful, not to mention enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone studying troubadours and troubadour poetry and to anyone interested in the subject who doesn't mind a scholarly method of writing. Just read the sample pages and see if it's your cup of tea.

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling, Romantic Topic Sterilized by "Scholars"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling, Romantic Topic Sterilized by "Scholars"
Review: 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.