Master's Self-Study

The Troubadours of France: Writing and Poetry

Occitan lyric from Guilhem IX to the Albigensian Crusade and beyond: trobar, the canso and its genres, the vidas and razos, the music and manuscripts, and the trouveres and Dante.

Orientation

Graduate teaching of the troubadours at these universities is seminar based and small. The clearest current models are Columbia's MUSI GU4122 Songs of the Troubadours (Susan Boynton), which joins poetic and musical analysis, manuscript transcription, and weekly Old Occitan from Paden's Introduction to Old Occitan; Princeton's FRE 509 The Troubadours and the Occitan Tradition (Sarah Kay), on desire, knowledge, and manuscript culture; Penn's Troubadours at the Center (Wendy Pfeffer, Fall 2023), whose full syllabus uses Akehurst and Davis, Gaunt and Kay, Paden, and Grains of Gold; Yale's FREN 8150 Medieval Lyric (Fall 2026); and Oxford's MSt in Medieval Studies, which lists Old Occitan among its compulsory language options.

So this course has two tracks that run every week: a reading track (poems, vidas and razos, scholarship) and a language track (Old Occitan, about 2 hours a week). By Module 14 you should read a canso with a dictionary and produce a short critical edition with commentary, the kind of work Columbia and Penn assign.

Poetry at Harvard's overview gives the scale: a corpus of more than 2,500 texts and about 240 melodies, mostly preserved in thirteenth and fourteenth century chansonniers. All of the original poems are medieval and in the public domain; old editions (Bartsch, Raynouard, Appel, Jeanroy, Chabaneau) are free on the Internet Archive and are bundled or linked below. Modern editions and translations are cited with library links.

Prerequisites

  • Reading knowledge of one Romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, or Portuguese) helps a great deal; Penn's seminar notes it is helpful but not required.
  • Language tool: Paden, An Introduction to Old Occitan (MLA) is the standard graduate textbook (Columbia and Penn both use it). It is in copyright, so get it from a library or the publisher. Free substitutes: the grammar and glossary in Bartsch's Chrestomathie (1892, French) and Crescini's Manualetto (1905, Italian).
  • Music is optional but recommended: you do not need to read notation to start; Module 10 introduces it.

Pace: 14 weeks at about 8 to 10 hours a week, including 2 hours of language work.

What the schools teach

ColumbiaMUSI GU4122 Songs of the Troubadours (Boynton): poetic and musical analysis, manuscript transcription and editing, weekly Old Occitan with Paden.
PrincetonFRE 509 The Troubadours and the Occitan Tradition: Permutations of Desire and Knowledge (Sarah Kay).
PennTroubadours at the Center (Pfeffer, Fall 2023): full syllabus with readings and assessment.
YaleFREN 8150 Medieval Lyric (Butterfield and Webb, Fall 2026); summer MUSI S121E starts with troubadours.
HarvardCOMP LIT 193 love poetry survey incl. Provencal lyric (Fall 2025); Poetry at Harvard overview. No dedicated troubadour graduate seminar found.
StanfordFRENCH 205 Songs of Love and War: troubadours, trouveres, dolce stil novo, manuscripts.
CornellFaculty page lists a graduate course, The Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres (Peraino); no syllabus found.
BrownENGL 1360U Europe in the Vernacular (upper level undergraduate) includes troubadours.
OxfordMSt in Medieval Studies offers Old Occitan as a compulsory language option; TORCH Old Occitan workshops on lyric and vidas.

No matching course found

  • Dartmouth: no troubadour or Old Occitan course found.
  • Harvard: no dedicated troubadour seminar found (only comparative surveys).
  • Cornell and Brown: no current graduate syllabus found online.

The program, step by step

Module 1

Orientation: who were the troubadours, and what is trobar?

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Define troubadour, trobar, canso, vers, and fin'amor
  • Map the courts and regions of Occitania
  • Set up a glossary and a reading log

Exercise or deliverable

Make a one page map of Occitania with ten courts or towns tied to named troubadours (use Smith's Troubadours at Home and the vidas).

Assessment

Language check: read aloud the first stanza of Can vei la lauzeta mover with the pronunciation rules; record yourself.

Read

Watch

Module 2

Guilhem IX and the question of origins

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Read the earliest troubadour songs closely
  • Weigh the Latin, liturgical, folk, and Arabic-Andalusian origin theories

Exercise or deliverable

Translate Farai un vers de dreyt nien into English prose with notes on every word you had to look up (DOM and Levy via Lexilogos).

Assessment

Write 800 words: which origin theory does the poem itself best support?

Module 3

Marcabru, Cercamon, and the moralists: trobar clus versus leu

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Explain closed and light styles
  • Read a pastorela and a moral vers

Exercise or deliverable

Close reading: scan L'autrier jost'una sebissa (syllables and rhyme scheme) and annotate the social roles of knight and shepherdess.

Assessment

Short answer: what does the shepherdess win, and how does the form help her?

Module 4

Jaufre Rudel and amor de lonh: poem versus vida

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Read the distant love song
  • Compare the poem with the vida that made it famous

Exercise or deliverable

Translate the Jaufre Rudel vida (it is short prose, ideal for beginners, as Oxford's workshop also found). Note three places where the vida invents from the poem.

Assessment

Language: first full prose translation, checked against Farnell.

Module 5

Bernart de Ventadorn and the classic canso

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Analyze the canso's stanza, rhyme, and tornada
  • Use the key terms: joi, jovens, mezura, pretz, lauzengier

Exercise or deliverable

Build a metrical and rhyme table for Can vei la lauzeta mover (Frank's repertory style: syllables per line, rhyme letters, coblas type).

Assessment

Write 1,000 words on the lark image and the speaker's loss of self, citing the Occitan.

Module 6

Vidas and razos: inventing the troubadour

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Explain how and where the vidas and razos were written
  • Read them as literary criticism, not biography

Exercise or deliverable

Translate two vidas and one razo. For the razo, quote the poem it explains and judge whether the story fits.

Assessment

Language checkpoint: unseen translation of a 10 line vida in 45 minutes.

Read

Watch

  • No video this week; the time goes to the exercise.
Module 7

The trobairitz: women troubadours

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Read the Comtessa de Dia, Castelloza, and the tensos with women's voices
  • Discuss authorship and voice

Exercise or deliverable

Compare A chantar m'er with a Bernart de Ventadorn canso: who speaks, to whom, about what, and with what power?

Assessment

1,200 word essay with at least four quotations in Occitan with your translations.

Module 8

Trobar ric and Arnaut Daniel; Dante's miglior fabbro

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Read the sestina and rare rhyme
  • Trace Arnaut's reception in Dante and Pound

Exercise or deliverable

Diagram the end word rotation of Lo ferm voler and write either a commentary or your own sestina in English following the same scheme.

Assessment

Short answer: why does Dante let Arnaut speak Occitan in Purgatorio 26?

Module 9

Genres beyond the canso: sirventes, tenso, partimen, alba, planh

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Identify each genre by form and occasion
  • Read Bertran de Born's war songs and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

Exercise or deliverable

Make a genre table with one example of each (title, poet, PC number from Bartsch's Grundriss, first line, form, occasion).

Assessment

Quiz yourself: identify the genre of five unseen opening stanzas from Bartsch.

Module 10

Music and manuscripts: the chansonniers

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Navigate a digitized chansonnier
  • Understand melody transmission and the troubadour melody corpus
  • Transcribe a short passage

Exercise or deliverable

Find Can vei la lauzeta mover in a Gallica chansonnier, transcribe the first stanza's text (diplomatic), and describe the layout and notation.

Assessment

Compare your transcription with the Bartsch edition and list every editorial change.

Module 11

The Albigensian Crusade, the Cathars, and the end of a world

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Narrate the crusade (1209 to 1229) and its politics
  • Read poetry of protest and the Canso de la crotzada

Exercise or deliverable

Read Peire Cardenal's Un sirventes novel and one passage of the Canso; write 1,500 words on how poetry records occupation and resistance.

Assessment

Rubric: historical accuracy (check against Pegg), close reading, and avoidance of Cathar myth.

Module 12

North of the Loire: the trouveres

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Compare trouvere and troubadour lyric
  • Read Thibaut de Champagne and Gace Brule

Exercise or deliverable

Pair a Thibaut chanson with a troubadour canso on the same theme and compare language, form, and music.

Assessment

Short presentation (recorded, 10 minutes) as in Penn's seminar format.

Module 13

Legacy: Italy, Catalonia, Germany, and the modern Occitan revival

about 10 to 12 hours

Goals

  • Trace the troubadours into the Sicilian school, Dante, Petrarch, and Minnesang
  • Understand the Occitan revival and today's Occitan

Exercise or deliverable

Write an annotated bibliography of 12 items on one capstone topic (Penn's assignment model: first a full list, then a selective annotated list).

Assessment

Bibliography graded on completeness, currency, and accurate citation (MHRA style).

Read

Watch

Module 14

Capstone: a small critical edition and commentary

about 20 or more hours

Goals

  • Edit, translate, and interpret one song
  • Present it like a conference paper

Exercise or deliverable

Choose one song not used in class. Produce: base manuscript choice with reasons, text with apparatus of variants from two witnesses, facing English translation, notes, and a 4,000 word commentary.

Assessment

Final: 20 minute recorded conference presentation plus the edition. Graded like Penn's term paper and conference talk.

Read

Watch

  • No video this week; the time goes to the exercise.