The Poetry of the Medieval Troubadour, William IX of Aquitaine: The Songs that Built Europe offers a new edition, translation, and critical discussion of the songs of the first European troubadour, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine. This book argues that William and his poetic works manifest the economic, political, and cultural forces that laid the foundations of modern Europe, including the subjectivities of modern westerners and the concerns and motifs of what later became the national literatures of France, Spain, England, Germany, and Italy. Encouraging personal freedoms, self-definition, and the pursuit of love and happiness, the culture of courtly love that William initiated is distinctly modern but can also be seen to have played a key role in the subjection of medieval Europeans to the then-emergent market economy, imperialist ambitions of the Church, and authority of proto-national kingdoms. As such subjection affected even the highest-ranking aristocrats, such as William, the road of liberation of desire appears to have been a fast lane to serfdom for everyone, perhaps the most pre-modern feature of the modern and postmodern conditions.
