Several left only snippets of their poetry while others were missing biographical details and, even worse, their very names. Indeed, their reputations had crumbled into various stages of neglect. Investigation revealed that little is known about them, actually. I had never heard of these trobairitz (the feminine of troubadour). Shortly after publication a reader informed me that as many as 20 southern women wrote songs, and she went on to list some of the most prominent: the Countess of Dia, Azalais de Porcairages, Maria de Ventadorn. While the idea of a female poet was not unknown- of the 450 troubadours known by name, 4 are women- the composition of literature was not considered an appropriate pastime for women. These writers and musicians, as I stated in my book, were males. Growing up in the south of France, an area renowned for its poetry and music, she not surprisingly would be a leading patron of the arts, and her courts would welcome serious poets called troubadours. Teasing out the truth of any so-called fact can make you crazy.īack in 1977 I published a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who become the queen of France and later England in the 12th century. A fact is always liable to be a complete lie, or exaggeration, or-perhaps the most frustrating-partly accurate. The problem with any fact, of course, is the little matter of truth. After years of collecting countless scraps of information, we face the task of distilling our material into a reasonable narrative, with facts checked and double checked. Like all biographers I immerse myself in not only subjects’ personal experiences but also in the history of their times, all of which involves the careful selection of detail.
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