Meg Bogin

The Women Troubadours

An introduction to the women poets of 12th-century Provence and a collection of their poems.

This is the first twentieth-century study of the women troubadours who flourished in Southern France between 1150 and 1250—the great period of troubadour poetry. The book is comprised of a full-length essay on women in the Middle Ages, twenty-three poems by the women troubadours themselves in the original Provencal with translations on facing pages, a capsule biography of each poet, notes, and reading list.

"Meg Bogin has unearthed one of the strongest and loveliest of the varied fragments of women's culture. Her translations . . . will delight any woman who cares about our creative tradition." —Adrienne Rich

"Meg Bogin has lit the poems of the women of an earlier age . . . and given them to us in their full power." —Muriel Rukeyser

"Meg Bogin rescues from neglect the women poets who wrote beside the more famous male troubadours of courtly love in Southern France. . . . The strength of her presentation lies in her case for the sudden emergence of these 'first female voices' in twelfth-century feudal Languedoc." —Marina Warner, Manchester Guardian

"A study that fascinates. . . . A thorough and insightful tribute to those women . . . who left for us a few, clarion, powerful love poems." —Janet Beeler, American Poetry Review

"Modern readers will find [the poems] surprisingly fresh in their direct treatment of the man-woman relationships, and will particularly enjoy the resonance they take on from a reading of Ms. Bogin's sketch of the historic background." —Publishers Weekly