jongleur

In medieval France, a wandering minstrel and entertainer. The jongleurs' talents varied greatly: some were jugglers, acrobats, mime artists, or exhibitors of animals; some recited and sang, accompanying themselves on a stringed instrument; others were skilled in performing memorized poems or even composing works of their own.

Jongleurs flourished particularly in the 12th and 13th centuries, declining in the 14th century as literacy grew and entertainment became more specialized.

The literary repertoire of a single jongleur could be very large and include chansons de geste (epics), lyric poetry, Breton lays and short romances, saints' lives and other pious verse, fabliaux (comic tales in verse), comic monologues, and other genres. In much of their verse the jongleurs leave a picture of their daily life: earning little money and squandering it on wine and dice, their clothes in tatters, with a hungry wife and children to feed. But others enjoyed more generous patronage among the nobility, whom they might even accompany to the wars. The trouvères were a superior class of jongleur, poets in their own right, who acted as leaders of troupes of jongleurs.