Courtly Love Revisited in the Age of Feminism

Antonia Southern

Description

Courtly love and feminism are strange bedfellows, the one a controversial literary concept, and the other a continuing crusade. Both can be taken seriously or ridiculed. In this incisive book, Antonia Southern tries to do both with both. Courtly Love focuses a feminist lens on fourteen authors, some well-known and some less so. They aimed variously to entertain, amuse, instruct, make money, or please themselves. Marie de France is the supreme example of the last category. Sir Thomas Malory wrote in prison and needed to pass the time. Christine de Pizan wrote to make a living for herself and her family. The Knight of La Tour-Landry wrote advice for his own daughters. Sir Philip Sidney wrote for his sister and her friends. Chrétien de Troyes and Andrew Capellanus had patrons to please, and so sometimes did Geoffrey Chaucer. A historian unrepentantly trespassing in the verdant fields of English literature, Southern rejects the concept of “the Death of the Author” and the divorce of authors from their writing and seeks to understand them on their own terms.

Sujets

• Comparative Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Themes
• Subjects
• Medieval
• Women
• Edad Media
• Literature
• Woman
• Middle Ages
• Christine de Pizan
• The Women
• History
• Thomas Malory
• Philip Sidney
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Christine de Pisan

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781680537222
• Langue: English

Extrait

Courtly Love revisited in the Age of Feminism
Antonia Southern
Academica Press
Washington~London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Southern, Antonia, author.
Title: Courtly Love Revisited in the Age of Feminism | Antonia Southern
Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023933927 | ISBN 9781680537215 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781680537222 (ebook)
Copyright 2023 Antonia Southern
Dedication
For Hugo as always
and for Jeremy Summerly.
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Part I Chapter 1 The Court of Marie de Champagne Chapter 2 Andreas Capellanus and De Amore Chapter 3 The Lais of Marie de France and The Owl and the Nightingale Chapter 4 The Romance of the Rose Chapter 5 Christine de Pizan and the Knight of La Tour Landry Part II Chapter 6 Troilus and Criseyde: A Love Story and a Tragedy Chapter 7 Four of Chaucer’s Love Poems Chapter 8 Love in the Canterbury Tales Chapter 9 Chaucer’s Contemporaries: John Gower and Thomas Usk Chapter 10 Lancelot and Guinevere Chapter 11 Tristram and Isolde Chapter 12 Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier Part 3 Chapter 13 The Countess of Pembroke ’ s Arcadia Chapter 14 Astrophil and Stella Chapter 15 The Shepherds’ Calendar, Little Love Poems and a Hymn to Marriage Chapter 16 The Faerie Queene – Courtly Love Routed. Conclusion Bibliography Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. Articles. Index
List of Illustrations
Sacred and Profane Love .
Marie de France .
Christine de Pizan .
Chaucer’s Knight and the Franklin .
Lancelot and Guinevere .
Tristan and Isolde .
The Court of Urbino Simone Ferri. (Foto Biblioteca Vaticana) .
Title page of the Arcadia 1593 .
The Shepherd’s Calendar March .
Title page of The Fairie Queene
All except Simone Ferri courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Gallery.
Acknowledgements
I have had a great deal of help in writing this book. I could not have done it without the support of Country Orders of the London Library, Gosia Lowick and her staff. Many friends have read sections, encouraged and criticized: Clare Asquith, Jane Bliss, John Bush, Mark Dunn,Kate McFarlan, Roly Montgomery and Laura Southern. Felicity and Paul Whiffen have struggled patiently with my technical incompetence.
My family have put up for a long time with Courtly Love as well as the other kind. It goes without saying that the mistakes and misjudgements are my own.
List of Abbreviations
Book of the Knight .
Ed. G.S.Taylor: The Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry 1930
Capellanus
Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love trans. John Parry Columbia University Press 1960.
Castiglione the Courtier.
Baldassare Castiglione: The Book of the Courtier ed. and trans. Virginia Cox 1994.
Chaucer C.T.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales ed. and trans. Nevill Coghill Penguin 1951.
Chaucer Love Visions
Geoffrey Chaucer: Love Visions ed. and trans. Brian Stone Penguin 1983.
Chaucer Oxford Companion
ed. Douglas Gray: The Oxford Companion to Chaucer O.U.P. 2003.
Chaucer T. and C.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde ed. and trans. Nevill Coghill 1971.
Chaucer Riverside
ed. F.N. Robinson: The Riverside Chaucer O.U.P. 1987.
C. de P. Writings
ed. Charity Cannon Willard: The Writings of Christine de Pizan Persea Books 1994.
C. de P. Duke
trans. Thelma Fenster: The Book of the Duke of True Lovers Persea Books 1991.
C. de T.
Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances ed. and trans. William W. Kibler and Carleton W.Carroll 2004.
C.S.L.
C.S.Lewis: The Allegory of Love O.U.P. 1936.
Lais.
e d. and trans. Glynn Burgess and Keith Busby: The Lais of Marie de France 1999.
M. d’ A. I and M. d’ A II
Thomas Malory: Le Morte d ’ Arthur ed. Janet Cowen 1969.
M. d’A Vin
The Works of Thomas Malory ed. Eugene Vinaver O.U.P. 1954
R. de R.
Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meun trans. Frances Horgan: The Romance of the Rose O.U.P. 1994.
Sidney Arcadia N.A.
Sir Philip Sidney: The Countess of Pembroke ’ s Arcadia ed. Albert Feuillerat C.U.P. 1912.
Sidney Arcadia O.A.
Sir Philip Sidney: The Countess of Pembroke ’ s Arcadia ed. Jean Robertson O.U.P. 1973.
Sidney Major Works
Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones O.U.P. 1989.
Spenser Amoretti
ed. William A. Oram: The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser Yale 1989.
Spenser Epithalamion
ed. William A. Oram: The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser Yale 1989.
Spenser F.Q.
Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene 1910.
Spenser The Shepherds’ Calendar
ed. William A. Oram: The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser Yale 1989.
Introduction
She [Eve] was formed not just from any part of his body [Adam’s] but from his side, so that it should be shown that she was created for the partnership of love … since she was made neither to dominate, nor to serve the man, but as his partner, she had to be produced neither from his head nor from his feet, but from his side, so that he would know that she was to be placed by himself.
Peter Lombard: Sentences 1155 – 1158.
If women were not good and their counsels good and profitable, our Lord God of Heaven would never have wrought [made] them, nor called them ‘help’ of man, but rather confusion of man.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales: The Tale of Melibeus c.1386.
A reproduction of Titian’s work seems appropriate for this study of love in many different forms over a period of five centuries. Sacred and Profane Love was painted in celebration of a marriage in 1515. It was originally called The Two Venuses , a much better name for it than the title by which it has become known to-day, given to it more than one hundred and fifty years after it was commissioned.
‘Sacred and profane’ suggests a dichotomy, a separation into two contrasting parts which would have made little sense to contemporaries accustomed to strange and various images illustrating Holy works. The two Venuses are, in fact, twins, painted from the same model. Both are honourable and praiseworthy; the naked Venus represents celestial love, beyond reality, and the clothed, terrestrial love in the material world. Nudity in the Renaissance world signified unvarnished truth and the flaming vessel held by the naked Venus proclaims this. The clothed Venus is of the everyday world; she wears a crown of myrtle and a belt, symbols of marriage, her clothes are rich and gaudy and she is holding a golden vessel presumably full of money and jewels. Cupid, between the two Venuses, playing with water in the fountain confirms the essential peacefulness and harmony of the scene. 1
The relief on the front of the fountain provides a contrast, a different aspect of love, uncivilized and alarming, shown by an unbridled horse (popular symbol of unbridled passion), a man raping a woman (he has her by her hair) and a flagellation scene which may be punishment or perhaps purification. 2
It is odd to think of fashion in connection with the supposedly timeless emotion of love. The feeling, one imagines, cannot have changed much over the centuries although it has in literature and language as Chaucer recognised in the late fourteenth century.
And then, you know, the forms of language change
Within a thousand years, and long ago
Some words were valued that will now seem strange,
Affected, even; yet they spoke them so,
And fared as well in love, for all I know,
As we do now; in various lands and ages
Various are the ways to win love’s wages. 3
It has been argued that there is nothing in literature that does not, in some degree, percolate into life. 4
Romantic love is apparently out of fashion nowadays although human nature being what it is there must be sufferers out there. Suffering is a constant feature in the literature about love in the Middle Ages – as it is in the love stories of many centuries. In everyday life at all times as well as the sufferers there must also have been men and women who had no time for the affectations and rules of courtly love which influenced poetry and prose and maybe manners in England and Europe during that time.
Twenty-first century women do not wish to have doors opened for them or seats offered to them in crowded trains. Their luggage travels on wheels; they do not want men to stand up when they come in to a room and they are ready to carry the coals themselves. In exchange for these freedoms they have the right of equal access to all jobs and professions, equal pay (at least in theory), the right to speak their minds and freedom from domestic responsibility (again at least in theory). They are appalled by the supposed sufferings of their mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers.
One of the reasons for this, of course, is education, available progressively over the last two hundred years or so, equally to both genders and theoretically to all classes, with a resultant change in attitudes. Progress in the condition of women in society in the western world has been one of the great achievements of the last hundred and fifty years. Sadly this is not the case to-day in places dominated by fundamentalist Islam.
Language has reflected this change. Frauendienst was the title of a thirteenth century work by the minnesinger , 5 Ulrich von Liechtenstein, which has been translated as The Service of Ladies , appropriately for the amusing and charming story which it tells of the faithful, unrequited love of a young man for a married noblewoman considerably older than himself. The sympathies of the reader must all be with the man. The ending is sad but the author concludes: ‘I could not neglect my art nor leave off singing women’s praise. I sang of love and happy days.’
The German word was adopted in English and appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as used in 1879 with the meaning ‘exaggerated chivalry towards women, all that was fantastic and ridiculous in the age of chivalry.’ Much of the courtly love sentim