Medieval Love-Fashioning

Configurations of Fin'Amor in European Literature, 1100-1485
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-11003-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture

Medieval Love-Fashioning examines the topic of fin’amor, “gentle love”, in poetry, verse romances, and prose from the European High and Late Middle Ages.

It shows how fin’amor was established in twelfth-century troubadour poetry, then modified, parodied and critiqued through four centuries of imaginative literature. This approach aims to do justice to the diversity of literary representations and interpretations of love in the Middle Ages, while at the same time maintaining a strict focus on fin’amor (rather than the tried-and-tested but historically cumbersome concept of “courtly love”). In this book, fin’amor is treated as a malleable trope (rather than a fixed concept), a metaphorical cluster incorporating classical (Ovidian) commonplaces, feudal phraseology, and liturgical formulae. A brief background survey is followed by presentations of poets such as the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn, covering the twelfth century in some detail. The account continues, more synoptically, with enquiries into mostly canonical works from the later Middle Ages, such as Dante’s Comedy (early fourteenth century) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (mid 1380s). The rationale for this arrangement is to allow the isolation of a well-defined and carefully delimited topic through four centuries of medieval literature, demonstrating its mobility across borders, languages and genres.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cullhed, Anders

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie Emotion, Motivation, Handlung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface Introduction: Loving God and One’s Neighbour PART I 1. 12th Century: The Great Age of Love 2. Monasterial Pastimes: Baudri and Constance 3. The First Troubadour: The Count of Poitou 4. The Exegete as a Lover: Bernard of Clairvaux 5. No Regrets: Héloïse 6. Vertigo: Bernart de Ventadorn 7. Desire Restrained: Chrétien 8. Both Yes and No: Andrew the Chaplain 9. Passion and Parody: Marie de France 10. Without Further Ado: “The Song of the Rake” 11. The Cleric on the Warpath: Alan of Lille 12. The Condemned: Tristan and Isolde PART II 13. 13th Century: Bliss/Sin 14. ”Where Love Meets Love”: Wolfram 15. Deconstruction: Cavalcanti 16. From Florence to Paradise: Dante 17. Plucking the Rose: From Guillaume to Jean PART III 18. 14th and 15th Centuries: Godforsaken Passions 19. “Into a Luminous Abyss”: Petrarch 20. The Angel’s Lost Wings: Boccaccio 21. The Mad Love of the World: Archpriest Juan Ruiz 22. Love and Love Not. Chaucer 23. Up for Debate: Christine de Pizan 24. Love’s Wasteland: Malory Conclusion Appendix: Quotations in Their Original Languages Bibliography Index of Names

Über Autor(innen)

Anders Cullhed (b. 1951) is a professor emeritus in Literary Studies, Stockholm University, a literary critic, and a translator. He has published widely on a rich gamut of topics in premodern literature. His main works remain Quevedo: El instante poético (Zaragoza, 2005), The Shadow of Creusa: Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature (Berlin, 2015), and a biography of Dante Alighieri (published in Swedish, Stockholm 2021). Among the books he has edited/co-edited are True Lies Worldwide? Fiction in Global Context (Berlin, 2014), Pangs of Love and Longing: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014), and Fiction and Figuration in High and Late Medieval Literatur (Rome, 2016). Cullhed was the Swedish initiator and leader of The Northern European Dante Network and served as the President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities between 2014 and 2020.