The Aged Troubadour

Against a backdrop of multiple operatic scenarios, THE AGED TROUBADOUR tells the story of an aging, disillusioned philosopher whose chance encounter with a beautiful young woman stirs his hope of redeeming something from the youthful years he has supposedly wasted on the pursuit of wisdom. Emulating Rousseau, he tries luring the woman into his erotic embrace by sharing with her the first chapter of a novel he has started composing along Faustian lines about their own relationship. But when his initial fantasy of a "night of pleasure" is frustrated by the woman's apparent lack of interest in anything more than a friendship, his writing of the story is stymied, and fascination with the porn he has stumbled across on the Internet turns into an addiction that threatens the loss of his professional position. A trip with the woman to Alaska, climaxed by a night at the opera in Santa Fe on their return, helps him recover the sense of wonder which, according to his analyst, years of philosophical speculation had smothered. In the end his eyes are opened to the true nature of his love for the woman, and he saves his soul and job by converting the story of their relationship into a myth of "pure love" imagined by the medieval troubadours. KARL LODUR lives in a Midwestern town in the United States where, after completing graduate studies for a doctoral degree at several European and American universities, he has taught philosophy at the local college for the past twenty-five years. In addition to his fictional writing, he has published multiple books and articles on a variety of philosophical and theological issues, including several on the life and thought of medieval times.