Cantigas: Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poems

"These cantigas, in Zenith’s hands, remind me that a poetry’s message is its music."—Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's

"Zenith helps provide a roadmap to appreciate some of the idiosyncratic aspects of the medieval language while also allowing himself the freedom to interpret the cantigas without a priority for overly literal translation. . . . Zenith’s phrasing conveys the love-sickness, anguish, jealousy, danger and fear that pulse through the original poems."—Jacob Abell, Reading in Translation

"Delightful. . . . A bilingual volume that reveals an intriguing world of courtly love and satire in medieval Portugal and Spain."—Portuguese American Journal

"Zenith is to be congratulated for an authoritative, attractive and highly readable presentation of these songs to a twenty-first-century anglophone audience."—David Frier, Times Literary Supplement

"This edition will bring this considerably large lyric corpus to the attention of a much wider circle of readers. It is a volume that deserves to be in the library of every medievalist."—Josiah Blackmore, Speculum

“Cantigas opens a new vista onto a famous European poetic tradition. Richard Zenith’s introduction is a rich trove of history and insight, and his translations are revelations in terms of how deftly they capture the lyrical combination of verbal artistry and incantatory resonance.”—John Keene, translator of Hilda Hilst’s Letters from a Seducer

“Translated with elegance and wit, Cantigas is a brilliant accomplishment. Richard Zenith is the most celebrated and versatile translator from Portuguese working today.”—Anna M. Klobucka, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth