Songs of a Friend

Love Lyrics of Medieval Portugal

136 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 8 halftones, notes

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4574-5
    Published: March 1996
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-7600-8
    Published: October 2005
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-7581-5
    Published: October 2005

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Portugal enjoyed one of the richest and most sophisticated cultures of the Middle Ages, in part because of its vibrant secular literature. One popular literary genre of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the cantigas de amigo, love songs in which male poets wrote from a female perspective. More than five hundred of these mysterious poems depicting a young girl's love for an absent lover survive today. Until now, however, they have remained inaccessible except to a small circle of scholars. In her translation of nearly one hundred representative examples of the cantigas de amigo, Barbara Hughes Fowler recovers the beauty of these poems for the modern reader. Her accurate and elegant renderings capture the charming spontaneity of the lyrics and show them to be a uniquely appealing form of medieval literature. (excerpt of one of the poems) Lovely mother, I saw my friend but did not speak with him and so I lost him, but now I'm dying of love for him. I did not speak because of my disdain; I'm dying, mother, for love of him.

About the Author

Barbara Hughes Fowler, a well-known classicist, translator, and poet, is author of The Seeds Inside a Green Pepper, a volume of original poems. Her translations include Love Lyrics of Ancient Egypt, Hellenistic Poetry, and Archaic Greek Poetry. She is John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more information about Barbara Hughes Fowler, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Barbara Fowler's masterful translations offer a panoramic view of the thematic concerns expressed in the cantigas de amigo and convey the haunting and lovely lyrical nature of the original songs as well. Songs of a Friend will not only be of interest to medievalists, but also to those in the fields of women's studies and comparative literature."--Linda M. A. Rodrigues, New School for Social Research

"Songs of a Friend places before the English-language reader, finally, a careful selection of medieval Galician-Portuguese songpoems that literally bubble with the fear and trembling, the wonder and excitement, and the anguish and frustration a young girl feels when she cannot account for her lover's absence or predict his return. Her yearning and desire, eternal experiences of young love, are here beautifully rendered in Barbara Fowler's lucid English versions. Galician-Portuguese is fortunate to have a translator with the touch of the poet. The reader will be enchanted."--Joseph T. Snow, Michigan State University