Introduction

Following Aristotle, I understand the rhetoric of Old French and Occitan crusade songs to comprise their stylistic devices and ideological content. If, as I believe, literary and philological studies ought to make use of the discipline of discourse analysis, this is particularly important for a crusading text, which is essentially a rhetorical appeal for action. It is from the perspective of analysis of literary discourse that I shall examine the chief characteristics of the argumentation elaborated by the authors of crusade songs, and I shall also attempt to assess the extent to which they can be regarded as an echo of crusade preaching.

In the context of the present project a crusade song is understood as any lyric text linked to the phenomenon of crusading and to the political, religious or social history of the expeditions. This study will attempt to describe the art of writing associated with crusading: in other words, the art of writing the crusade. I shall not therefore address the question of the typology of the genre, but proceed via themes rather than sub-genres. The crusade song is a thematically based poetic genre and includes texts linked to other genres such as the canso or sirventes, and it presents an emblematic case of the interference of registers.

The great majority of pieces include a crusading appeal urging the listener to follow the poet's example. Many of the texts are ideological – political or religious – and are assimilable to the sirventes. They therefore very often constitute a reasoned argument based on the idea of proof of the need to take the cross or correct the conduct of the crusade, whether or not this ‘proof’ is rational. But there are perceptible changes in the articulation of this discourse, and hence the argumentation underpinning it, as it aims to convince and sway the audience. Such changes are bound up with the chronological development of the genre and hence, for political reasons, its renewal, as well as with the events of the crusades and its individual authors.