Portugal enjoyed one of the richest and most sophisticated cultures of the Middle Ages, in part because of its vibrant secular literature. One popular literary genre of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the cantigas de amigo, love songs in which male poets wrote from a female perspective. More than five hundred of these mysterious poems depicting a young girl's love for an absent lover survive today. Until now, however, they have remained inaccessible except to a small circle of scholars. In her translation of nearly one hundred representative examples of the cantigas de...