The troubadours, like other celebrities, need no introduction. They are part of the furniture of our cultural knowledge, an unforgettable heirloom in the European heritage. Who has not heard of the courtly world they ornamented and entertained, voicing for it the exquisite refinements of medieval love? For a glamorous period, this tradition of poet-composer-performers (460 of whose names we know) dazzled Southern French and neighbouring European courts with their songs (some 2,500 of which survive) in which passion and decorum are craftily combined. Although this period was relatively short-lived (c. 1100–c. 1300), its spark was sufficient to light the broader flame of subsequent European poetry. The rise of courtliness, in the senses both of ‘courtly love’ and ‘courtly living’, in which the troubadours played a determining role, helped to shape mainstream Western culture; while their commentaries as moralists, and as political and cultural critics, provide vital testimony to the attitudes which underlie and helped to form our own.

The significance of the troubadours is acknowledged in the space assigned to them in many different academic contexts: as part of the history of European poetry and music; as evidence for the history of social, gender and sexual relations, and the political and ideological world of medieval Europe; as a strand in the linguistic diversity of the Romance languages. The range of these contexts, however, suggests the complexity of the phenomenon. Many of the troubadours had international careers in their life-times, and were doubtless differently understood by different audiences; this continues to be the case.