Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
6 - Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
Summary
‘I love you,’ he says, kissing her throat, stroking her breasts, tracing the curve of her hip.
‘No, you don't, Vic.’
‘I've been in love with you for weeks.’
‘There's no such thing,’ she says. ‘It's a rhetorical device. It's a bourgeois fallacy.’
‘Haven't you ever been in love, then?’
‘When I was younger,’ she says, ‘I allowed myself to be constructed by the discourse of romantic love for a while, yes.’
(David Lodge, Nice Work)‘Years ago when I wrote about medieval love-poetry and described its strange, half make-believe, “religion of love”, I was blind enough to treat this as an almost purely literary phenomenon. I know better now.’
(C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)My title carries an implicit question: was falling in love in the Middle Ages different from falling in love today? The question reflects the still widespread belief that medieval lovers adhered to a systematized ‘code’ of ‘courtly love, a special, artificial variety of romantic love that obliged the lover to act in strange and exaggerated ways – to love without necessarily revealing his love to the lady concerned, to remain her devoted slave for years without seeking so much as a kiss by way of reward, to obey her every whim, however humiliating, to faint, to weep, to adore her as if she were a goddess rather than a woman.
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- Information
- Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English LiteratureThe Influence of Derek Brewer, pp. 88 - 110Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013