Literary History of the Troubadours

that they were, in our climates, the fathers of modern poetry original: "poéſie moderne"; referring to the development of vernacular literature in Europe following the Middle Ages.. But they are otherwise pictured as adventurers without status; as writers lacking enlightenment and taste, whose insipid gallantries deserve eternal oblivion, and whose works hold no interest except for those antiquarians original: "amateurs d'antiquités"; 18th-century scholars who studied the physical and literary remains of the past, often mocked for their obsession with "useless" history. who waste their lives scouring the rust off miserable Gothic monuments original: "monumens gothiques"; here used as a derogatory term for anything medieval, which was often viewed as barbaric or unrefined by Enlightenment thinkers..

The riches of our literature—capable of satisfying every mind and making us indifferent to less agreeable subjects—contributed to maintaining this prejudice; it seemed destined to be perpetuated forever. The Lives of the Troubadours, written by Jean Nostradamus Jean de Nostredame (1507–1577), the younger brother of the famous astrologer; he wrote a history of Provençal poets that is now known to be full of imaginative fabrications., is a work both dry and superficial, in which most of these poets are not even named; furthermore, it is too full of fables and gross errors, and has been too discredited since