"Only formal verse, respecting the troubadours' metrical innovations and their prodigious achievements in sonority and rhyme, can hope to convey both their individual voices and their collective charm. It is here that Robert Kehew's anthology succeeds so brilliantly."
— Barbara Newman, London Review of Books
"Kehew's anthology showcases ranges with Occitan text laid out beside English translations, prefaced with brief biographies of the composers. While troubadour verse has long been available in modern English, Kehew's collection is distinctive for its attempt at representing the songs' formal characteristics in translation....[T]he troubadours continue to delight and intrigue, and this anthology is testament to three translators' vigorous attempts to listen to and communicate their fascinating songs."
— Kathleen Palti, Times Literary Supplement
"A volume making the best-known troubadour poems accessible in English translation to a wide readership was long overdue. I am grateful to Robert Kehew and W. D. Snodgrass for their efforts—and also to Ezra Pound."
— John Haines, Music and Letters
"Kehew is an enthusiast, and this anthology is a brave attempt to enthuse and inform."
— Ruth Morse, Guardian
"This is an important book. . . . It is a handsomely produced and illustrated selection, in paperback, of some of the most important lyrics composed between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. . . . [It] is likely to generate a new wave of interest, among undergraduates and the general reader especially, in the emotional vitality and rhetorical freshness of a group of poets who . . . influenced profoundly not only medieval poets such as Dante and Chaucer, but English and French Romanticism and even, distantly, rock lyricists. . . . A valuable book: a useful and stimulating introduction to a poetic tradition undergraduate students and the general reader might otherwise neglect."
— Michael P. Kuczynski, Medieval Review
"A welcome gift to readers eager to know something of the poetic achievement of the troubadours but unschooled in their language."
— Samuel N. Rosenberg, Encomia