Skip to main content

Studies in Medieval Literature (410-0-20)

Topic

Troubadours and Tradition

Instructors

Christopher John Davis
847/467-5637
1860 Campus Drive Crowe Hall #2-140

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 3-410: Wed 3:00PM - 5:50PM

Overview of class

This seminar provides a comprehensive introduction to the poetry of the Occitan troubadours, their language, and their reception among later writers. The troubadours flourished in the south of France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, producing a varied and innovative corpus of lyric poetry, as well as narrative and grammatical texts, which exercised a profound influence on the emergence of later poetic traditions in other European vernaculars. We will study troubadour songs in their manuscripts contexts in order to think critically about the role of textual reception and canon formation in constructing the category of "the literary." Class discussions will be in English, but reading knowledge of French is required.