Most scholars would find the claim that troubadour poetry is the origin of French literature uncomplicated and uncontroversial. However, shows that the "Frenchness" of this tradition was invented, constructed, and confected by francophone medieval poets and compilers keen to devise their own literary history. makes a major contribution to medieval studies both by exposing this act of cultural appropriation as the origin of the French canon and by elaborating a new approach to questions of political and cultural identity. Eliza Zingesser shows that these questions, usually addressed on the level of narrative and theme, can also be fruitfully approached through formal, linguistic, and manuscript-oriented tools.