Fidel Fajardo-Acosta is professor of English at Creighton University.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsPreface and DisclaimerIntroduction. William IX of Aquitaine, the Premodern and Postmodern ConditionsWilliam IX, First of the ModernsThe Dialectic of Unreason: Romans, Christians, and Germanic BarbariansThe New Subjects of LoveTraveling to the PastNeither Past, Nor OtherWomen, Wealth, and PowerCourtly CultureThe Divinity of Love: Dante as a TroubadourCaveat EvangelistaChapter 1. The Life of William IX of AquitaineCarolingian PeriodCapetians, Church, and EmpireAquitaineWilliam IX of AquitaineCrusade of 1101–1102Robert d’ArbrisselAnjou and Other AffairsTwo-Faced WilliamChapter 2. The Songs of William IXManuscriptsManuscript CManuscript DManuscript EManuscript IManuscript KManuscript NManuscript RManuscript VManuscript a1Song 1: “Companho, farai ieu un vers covinen” (My friends, I will make a proper song)Standard Bibliographic Text IdentificationTopic/ArgumentDate of CompositionPrimary SourcesGenreForm and

Half ingenious scholarly commentary, half disquisition on the rot of modernity (which, of course, extends through to the Middle Ages and beyond), this book takes aim at contemporary political discourse which ridicules the medieval period as irrelevant, celebrates it as racist and homophobic, or makes it a strategically child-like evocation of the American dream. Taking Guilhem IX as a figure through whom to examine the universal appeal and message of Occitan poetic production as well as the tragic ironies of modern subjecthood, Fajardo-Acosta finds early vestiges of capitalism and the current debased view of the past, of truth, and of literature in the cynical and theatrical 12th-century comtal court of Guilhem IX in Poitiers. Fajardo-Acosta offers us in this study a refreshingly polemical intervention into cultural studies and an altogether exhilarating read.