Troubadours and Lyric Poetry

Why are the troubadours still considered lyric poetry?

The troubadours are still lyric poetry because they use the medium of music, and because they express their emotion through the poetry. In their situation, they use songs. As stated in the introduction of Lark in the Morning, they were romanticized as the minstrels with the “trunk-hose and the light guitar”, which emphasizes their use of song. Though the melodies to the poems have been lost for centuries, even the poets respond to their use of song in their works. For example, Marcabru states in “The Cleansing Place” that “Marcabru wrote the words and song./Hear what he says:” (55). Later in the poem he discusses “how I [Marcabru] grieve[s]”, which shows his outpouring of emotion (55). Here, we can emphasize “song”, “hear”, and “grieve” as support for this argument. For them, their songs and poems are synonymous. In this way, the troubadour’s songs are different from Latin lyric poetry, which did not have any music to accompany it, and Greek lyric poetry, which simply sometimes had the lyre, but was no set to it.  Though all three are called Lyric poetry because of the expression of emotion in all three, they are different in this way.