Exile and the Poetic Standpoint of the Troubadour Bertran de Born

Thanks to his close connections to the Plantagenets and his surviving poems, the twelfth-century troubadour Bertran de Born is a figure of interest to historians and literary scholars alike. In two poems addressed to Matilda, daughter of Henry II, Bertran examines themes of separation, dislocation, and exile in the context of what at first appears to be a standard 'courtly love' text. The idea of exile recurs at several other points in his work alongside his more obvious concerns of love, feudal politics, and crusading, providing an interesting angle for a fresh assessment of Bertran's poetic corpus.