Introduction to Old Occitan

“A work of impeccable scholarship, which manages to convey a great deal about troubadour language and culture, synthesizing much of the latest research in the field.” –Speculum“This hefty and scholarly book is very welcome and deserves a place in every university library.” –Modern Language Review

William D. Paden is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. A specialist in literature of the Middle Ages, he was co-editor with the late Mario Trovato of a 13th-century philosophical treatise in Latin, Guillelmus de Aragonia, De Nobilitate Animi (2012); co-author with Frances Freeman Paden of a book of English verse translations, Troubadour Poems from the South of France (2007); editor of essay collections on Medieval Lyric: Genres in Historical Context (2000), The Future of the Middle Ages: Medieval Literature in the 1990s (1994), and The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours (1989); editor of The Medieval Pastourelle (1987); and co-editor of The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born (1986). He was awarded a Mellon Emeritus Fellowship in 2011 for a project on “Love and Marriage in the Time of the Troubadours.