Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song

In medieval Occitania (southern France), troubadours and monastic creators fostered a vibrant musical culture. In response to the early Crusade campaigns of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Christians of the region turned to producing monophonic, poetic song, encompassing both secular and sacred genres. These works assert shifting regional identities and worldviews, exploring devotional practices and religious beliefs, overlaid with notions of contemporaneous geopolitics and secular, intellectual interests. Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song demonstrates the profound impact the Crusades had on two seemingly discrete musical-poetic practices: the Latin, sacred Aquitanian versus, associated with Christian devotion, and the vernacular troubadour lyric, associated with courtly love. Rachel May Golden investigates how such Crusade songs distinctively arose out of their geographic environment, uncovering intersections between the beginning of Holy War and the emergence of new styles of poetic-musical composition. She brings together sacred and secular genres of the region to reveal the inventiveness of new composition and the imaginative scope of the Crusades within medieval culture. These songs reflect both the outer world and interior lives, and often their conjunction, giving shape and expression to concerns with the Occitanian homeland, spatial aspects of the Crusades, and newly emerging positions within socio-political history. Drawing on approaches from cultural geography, literary studies, and musicology, Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song provides a timely perspective on geopolitical and cultural interactions between nations.

Rachel May Golden is Associate Professor of Musicology in the School of Music at the University of Tennessee, where she heads the Musicology area. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, Musical Quarterly, and Opera Quarterly, among other publications. She has been an American Council of Learned of Societies Fellow and an NEH Summer Scholar.

- List of Figures - List of Musical Examples - List of Tables - Introduction: "And so I cannot prophesy" - Chapter 1: Identity, Space, And Song in Crusading Occitania - Construing Local and Global Contexts - Space and Place - Crusade Songs in Scholarship - Motz e So - The South and Its Songs - Song Genres, Themes and Contexts - Sounding Objects in the Distance - Chapter 2: Occitania, Court, and Cloister - France, Spain and Kingdom - St. Martial, Monastery and Movement - Versus, Expression, and Resistance - Beyond Cloister, Beyond Court - An Occitanian Homeland - Conclusion - Chapter 3: Place, Frankishness, and Regionality - Pope Urban's Message - Crusade Chronicles - Recruitment and Regional Implications - Local Heroism in Chant et deport - Urban's Synthesis: Love, War, and Vow - Indulgence and Penance - Embodiment, Violence, and Affirmations of the Tongue - God's Wonders, Visions, and the Holy Lance - Selfhood, Identity, and Frankishness - Chapter 4: Situating the Holy Land: Juxtapositions and Circular Paths - Circular Paths - Pilgrimage and Devotions - Self and Enemy - The Allure of Distant Lands - Motion, Cross, and Territory in Ara pot hom connoisseur - Real and Imagined Journeys - Chapter 5: Near and Distant Lands in First Crusade Songs - Desiring Distant Lands: Ierusalem mirabilis - Pointing Toward Jerusalem - Distance, Wonder, and Variation - Nomen a solemnibus: Reclaiming Jerusalem - Jerusalem, Near and Far - Chapter 6: Locality, Distance, and Troubadour Song in the Second Crusade - The Second Crusade and Reconquista - Marcabru's Moralizing and Invective - Marcabru Makes War - Jaufre's Distant Desire - Singing Across the Sea - Chapter 7: Conclusions: Singing Crusade Journeys - Re-Creation, Recycling, and Contrafacture - Sounding Journeys and Songs in Motion - Appendix - Bibliography - Index