The Cancioneiro da Ajuda is a precious manuscript that collects some of the songs of the Galician-Portuguese troubadours. It is precious as a codex, with its rich (albeit incomplete) illuminations, and precious also because it is the only surviving songbook whose production is contemporary with the troubadours themselves (late 13th or early 14th century).

In this talk, we will take a brief tour of the manuscript itself, the poets collected in it and their songs, always bearing in mind the many open questions that this remarkable Cancioneiro still raises today

 

Biographical note

Graça Videira Lopes is a researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies (IEM) at NOVA FCSH , where she has been a lecturer in the Department of Portuguese Studies since 1982. With a PhD. in Medieval Literature (1993), her work has focused particularly on Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Lyrics, and in this context she is responsible for the database, online since November 2011, “Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs”, the result of the FCT Littera project (2008-2011) (http://cantigas.fcsh.unl.pt).

In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of the books: