Reviews for Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours: A Bilingual Edition

The average rating for Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours: A Bilingual Edition based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-10 00:00:00 Rogier Thierry This is a good anthology of troubadour poetry with a full and wide range of poets and styles represented. Kehew gives a brief introduction to the collection, and then supplements translations from Ezra Pound and W.D. Snodgrass with his own. This is a bilingual edition so we have the Old Occitan facing the modern English which is immensely useful - and the English translations are in verse in an attempt to convey the lyric quality of the poems/songs, not just their meaning. It's a little disappointing that there isn't a greater representation of trobairitz (female troubadours) here and I would especially have liked more from Comtessa de Dia. So this sits somewhere between a scholarly work and a 'popular' one: the contextualisation of the collection, the troubadour moment, and the individual poets doesn't probe or problematise the texts in any way, but there is a fuller bibliography attached. This is especially good as a supplement to the standard works and other translations from Occitan.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-27 00:00:00 Ruthann Richardson An excellent survey of troubadour literature with evocative translations--some beautiful poetry themselves.