SOURCE: "Troubadours: Their Sorts and Conditions," in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, edited by T. S. Eliot, New Directions, 1954, pp. 94-108.

Regarded as one of the twentieth-century's most influential American poets and critics, Pound is chiefly renowned for his ambitious poetry cycle, the Cantos, which he revised and enlarged throughout much of his life. These poems are significant for their lyrical intensity, metrical experimentation, literary allusions, varied subject matter and verse forms, and incorporation of phrases from foreign languages. An avid student of politics and history, Pound was particularly interested in the poetry of Provence, translating Old Provençal verse and exploring the lives and songs of the troubadours. In the following essay, originally published in 1913 in The Quarterly Review, he reveals the richness and variety of troubadour life as evidenced both in the poets' own canzoni (verse) and in the razos (prose chronicles). In addition, Pound documents...