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