COURTLY LOVE AND MYSTICAL LOVE

A. The Medieval Conception of Courtly Love

Courtly love: general aspects

(a) Description:

- a phenomenon that emerged in the Middle Ages

- it was understood as a relation of vassalage of a man to a woman of a higher social rank

- it appealed to a form of idealized adultery that was meant to be a trial to test resistance to temptation

- it had its own code of honour and courts of judgment

- in this context love became associated with ritual courtesy and obedience

(b) Origins and influences:

- a combination of several traditions:

(i) a classical tradition: Ovid's Ars amandi (Ars amatoria)

(ii) a Christian tradition which advocated a revised attitude towards woman

- this shifted the focus from sinful woman (Eve) to woman as contributor to salvation as mother of Christ (Mary)

- this view was supported by e diffusion of the cult of Virgin Mary introduced by the crusaders from Eastern Christianity

(iii) the influence of Soufi (Muslim) mysticism

- the soul was represented as appearing after death in the shape of a woman (senhal)

(c) Texts:

- treatise: Andreas Capellanus: De arte honeste amandi (On the art of courtly love)

- poetry: the troubadours (Provence)

- the romance cycles (France and England)

Courtly literature: the mediaeval romances

(a) Definition:

- a romance is a "story of adventure” in verse or prose involving fictitious and frequently marvelous or supernatural elements

- in Middle English romances, love is either a subordinated or incidental element

- insofar as it tends to have an element of adventure, it may come close to a form of heroic epic

- the hero conforms to a pattern of ideal knight with little individual variation

(b) Cycles:
- the “matters” (or cycles) were named and classified as such by Jean Bodel (12^th c.)

- important elements of the ancient classical world were translated into and taken over by the Middle Ages :

Main topics:

- the Fall of Troy

- the story of Dido and Aeneas

- the story of Alexander

- the story of Theseus

B. The Medieval Tradition of Mystical Love

Mystical literature

- developed on the border between literature and theology

- tried to convey a direct experience of divinity in a style that was a combination of theological and literary language

- developed around the idea that God made Himself manifest and perceptible to man in various sensitive ways;

- inner sight and occasionally inner hearing were privileged spiritual senses because through them had a vision of the divine, a theophany [Gr. Theos, God; phanes, vision]

D. ANNEX II

Ps. Dionysius:

The threefold perception (vision) of God according to Ps.Dionysius:

(a) the linear way: from observation of the exterior unreal world to the real, inner world of the spirit

(b) the spiral way: in which the intellect grasps God through elaborate reasoning

(c) the circular way: turning away form all things, earthly and material and abandoning reason, one surrenders oneself to the Absolute Being of God

Stylistic devices:

(a) reductive or anagogic imagery [Lat. reducere, to lead back; Gr. ana, up; agein, to lead]

- since human mind cannot think without images (phantasms), God manifests his goodness and his condescension by making Himself visible in the scriptural symbolism so that

the biblical figurae reflect the invisible

(b) affirmative (apophatic) and negative (cataphatic) ways; like and unlike symbols

- God can be referred to by like or similar or unlike or dissimilar symbols:

God can be described in an affirmative way, as Light, Truth or Life, the highest, most benevolent, infinitely good and merciful, but also in a negative way as in-finite, in-visible, in-definable, in-comprehensible, etc.

(c) concealing yet manifesting veils (velamina)

- this underlines the dimension of the written culture

there is an ambivalence between the hidden and secret and the manifest and unconcealed dimensions of things: similar to the scriptural signs, which are intelligible for the initiates but unintelligible to the ignorant, as letters are to the literate and respectively to illiterate people.

[Source: Dionysius the Areopagite, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, vols.1,2, trans. J. Parker (London: Parker, 1897); Artz, F., The Mind of the Middle Ages. AD 200-1500. A Historical Survey (New York:Knopf, 1953) pp. 73-75; Minnis, A., Scott, A.P., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism (c.1100-c.1375) (Oxford: OUP, 1988) pp. 165-173]

MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE [3]

MEDIEVAL DRAMA

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 795