Linda M. Paterson
The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c. 1100 - c. 1300.
Cambridge University Press, 1995. 0521352401  xii/367 pages.
Volume is bound in black cloth, with bright stamped silver lettering to spine. Top of spine is mildly bumped. Binding is firm. Previous owner's name and notation appear on front flyleaf. Pages are clean and bright. Dust jacket displays light shelfwear. 
"Occitania, known today as the south of France, had its own language and culture in the Middle Ages. Its troubadours created courtly love and a new poetic language in the vernacular, which were to influence European literature for centuries. There are many books on the troubadours, but this is the first comprehensive study of the society in which they lived. For readers of literature it offers a wide-ranging insight into the realities that lay behind the poetic mystique. For historians it opens up an important and neglected area of medieval Europe."