A full-scale survey of crusading lyrics in Old French and Occitan. The crusading movements provoked a vast and diverse mass of reactions in the medieval West. While Latin sources provide official versions of its preaching, organisation and events, the vernacular lyrics of the troubadours and trouvères present a secular perspective, through a cornucopia of on-the-spot responses in France, Occitania, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Cyprus, Syria and Greece. This book constitutes the first comprehensive, modern analysis of Old French and Occitan lyric texts relating to the crusades. It brings out their full range, from propaganda for the crusades, to criticisms of crusading and crusaders through vituperation, humour or cynicism, to their use as apretext for political or personal wrangling. It also shows how they shed light on many aspects of medieval life, among them chivalric and courtly values (often in tension with clerical ones), regional politics, sexual behaviour, personal experiences of crusading and captivity, the complex interaction of Christians, Greeks and Muslims, and bafflement in the face of failure and God's imponderable purposes. LINDA PATERSON is Professor Emerita, University of Warwick.

[A] remarkable achievements....Crusade scholars are in Paterson's debt. * PARERGON *
This work is a first-rate critical essay cum edition of crusade poetry that brings this neglected genre to the public eye and offers insightful historical context for a large corpus of medieval songs never before analyzed together. . . . It offers a gold mine of data and analyses and promises to become part of the critical canon in very short order. * H-NET *
This synthetic and wide-ranging survey of lyric crusade poetry is accompanied by an impressive digital sourcebook. Both should prove tremendous resources for those teaching and researching the crusades and medieval Latin and vernacular literary traditions. * SEHEPUNKTE *
Paterson succeeds in composing a readable, yet richly documented account of the crusades in the medieval lyric imagination. Both non-academic and scholarly readers of medieval literature and history should be indebted to Linda Paterson for both the book and the website. * H-FRANCE *
Paterson's monograph, Singing the Crusades, is a magisterial synthesis, in which she puts her detailed knowledge of both primary texts and scholarship at the service of a wider scholarly public. * Tenso *

LINDA PATERSON is Professor Emerita at Warwick University.