Medieval troubadours as proto-poets

Like some medieval history with your coffee in the morning? Goodness knows we do! Historical gems abound in this fascinating article about the invention of modern poetry, which Stanford professor Marisa Galvez traces to 12th century singer-songwriters and "their controversial insistence on singing about the profane."

These proto-poets, like William IX, duke of Aquitaine and possibly the first troubadour ever, veered away from the formal musical culture of religious hymns and sang about forbidden (occasionally interspecies) love instead:

"This is a man who wrote romantic love songs, boasting songs, and very bawdy songs involving erotic scenes with cats,” said Galvez. And, rather than singing in the "universal" language of Latin, William IX wrote his songs in Old Occitan – a vernacular local to southern France, Spain, Portugal and northern Italy. "It went against everything that they learned in church."

Predictably, this bawdy new form wasn't that popular with the clerics, who dismissed troubadours as "long-haired and skinny" and "lazy." Professor Galvez links this early popular mode to more recent (and similarly controversial) musical/poetic forms like hip-hop:

The troubadours also used pseudonyms to refer to each other, engaging in extended insult wars. Boasting about their rhyming skill, the value of their possessions and their sexual prowess, "troubadours used many of the same codes as rap songs do today," said Galvez.

The article is jam-packed with captivating factoids like that one. Read on to find out who invented the sestina, how songbooks transformed the troubadours' lyrics to poetry, and how those songbooks connect not just classic verse, but to the cancioneros of Tex-Mex folksongs and the traveling cordel poets of eastern Brazil.