ABSTRACT
Whatever the common image of the troubadour may be at present, it is probably exclusively masculine. Readers not particularly versed in medieval literature often appear surprised when they learn that there were women troubadours. Anyone at all familiar with the tradition of courtly love and the chivalric age, knows that women were addressed and celebrated, admired, pled with, and their love despaired of, within its conventions. Some may be aware that many of the great patrons of that high age of poetry, music, and sculpture were women. Few realize that there were women who wrote poetry themselves within that tradition, probably almost from its beginning. And that their poetry - even the small remnant of it that has survived - has a distinct character within troubadour poetry.
