The Troubadour Revival

First published in 1978, this book argues that the troubadour revival in late medieval Spain was a conservative reaction to social crisis by those who belonged, or were affiliated, to a powerful, expanding and belligerent aristocracy. The crisis was produced by a discrepancy between social theory and social reality which could never be resolved, because the theory was based on the belief in a divinely pre-ordained system of social stratification in which change was inconceivable. The study falls