The Troubadours

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Troubadour poetry was a part of the knight culture that flourished in the 12^th and 13^th Centuries. Typically a young knight fell in love with a married woman, usually the spouse of his own lord of the castle. In the courts the wives were often younger than their husbands and closer to the young men being trained at the court than the age of their own spouses. Men were also often far away on their military expeditions or travels. The women of nobility who were married by the family, who mostly had financial or dynastic affairs in their mind, didn’t generally get much joy out of their marriages. In this context the stories of ladies of castles who received more attention from young men than their own husbands are not necessarily far from the truth.

Knighthood and the behaviour it presupposed were a part of the culture of the nobility and created a certain role for the knights which separated them from the other members of society. The virtues of a knight included respecting women in addition to courage. On the other hand chivalrous poetry was also one form of the feudal society, for there the young man swore love and loyalty to his Madame in the same way that he was loyal to his feudal lord.

Troubadour poetry was one form of expressing chivalry love. There love was mostly play or a game, whose aim was either the game itself or perhaps on actual affair. Chivalrous poetry also speaks quite bluntly about the extramarital affairs. Nevertheless, a knight was supposed to bring forth all the noble virtues before a woman could give in to him. Typical features of chivalrous poetry were the complaints of a lover of the impossible pursuit of the object of attraction as well as portrayals of idealised love. A woman was the object of adoring for the troubadour.

The troubadour lyric was temporal in its character and also very vernacular. The troubadours were inheritors of the early travelling jugglers and their performances also include lampoons, funeral lamentations and boisterous dance songs.