MEDIEVAL LOVE LITERATURE

Love dominates, according to received opinion, the literature of the Middle Ages, a period that indeed saw the emergence of courtly romance and Troubadour poetry. But medieval love literature is not all brave knights pining for haughty ladies. Love, for medieval writers, could be sacred or transgressive, irrational or philosophical, transcendent or debasing – and often it was several of these things at once. On the other hand, in a time when everything claims to be about love, one may sometimes be tempted to wonder if nothing is, and the topic certainly provided a space for medieval writers to explore a number of related themes such as gender, class, cultural difference, nature, and truth. In this course we will consider a selection of these rich and paradoxical texts, as we read in a variety of
genres by authors across Europe including but not limited to: Abelard and Heloise, Ibn Hazm, Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Christine de Pisan.