Queer/Trans Reading and the Troubadours

Raimbaut d’Aurenga’s work has always been seen as inaccessible—too clever, self-referential, ironic, prickly—and he has largely defied definitive interpretation. However, when read today through the insights of queer theory and philology, we can better appreciate it as a form of dissent, addressed to a select group of fellow poets and insider audiences. A master of trobar clus—hermeneutic rhetoric reliant on invented vocabulary, unexpected similes and metaphors, and imprecise referents—Raimbaut redirected poetic energy away from the love topoi that then dominated the courts and directed it toward metaphysical and transgressive alternatives involving psychic connections between nature and the body; changing hierarchies between lord and joglar; men and women; men and men; and the community standards that confined him. The book concludes with new translations and commentary on twenty-four of his compositions.