This book is not a literary history, but a poetic history. It is addressed not only to the specialist, but to all those who are more deeply interested in literature and the poetry of ancient times. Moreover, he wants to awaken interest in the poets of this distant era. Instead of systematization, it directs attention to the emotional and thought drivers that initiated and shaped the first great lyrical development of modern European languages. And he does all this from the perspective of the 21st century man, based on the results of contemporary philology and psychology.

Michel Zink was born in 1945. He completed his university studies as a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, then taught at the University of Toulouse and the Sorbonne. In 1994, the long-standing institution of French postgraduate education, the College de France in Paris, re-established the department of medieval French literature for him, where he held his lectures until February 2016. He is a regular guest at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and other American universities, as well as many European and Japanese universities. In addition to a large number of technical articles, he is the independent author of more than twenty books discussing various issues of medieval literature. In addition to his wide-ranging scientific and scientific organizing activities, he is the author, co-author and editor of several educational works. He has been a member of the French Academy since 2000, and five years ago he was elected permanent secretary of the historical and literary academy. He has received numerous French and foreign awards, is an officer of the Order of Honor and a commander of the Order of Academic Palms.

"The poetical history of the Troubadours consists chiefly of their lives, their travels and loves, their relations, their careers, and their works. The poetical history of the Troubadours includes also the history of their art and influence, and especially the history of the manuscripts which they preserved at the close of their great age this poetry for us. Furthermore, the troubadours' poetic history includes the narrative treasure consisting of hundreds of short stories, which were written on the pretext of their poems, draw from these poems and comment on them, and which some manuscripts have preserved together with these poems."
Michel Zink