1. ‘luf-talkyng’ in Medieval Literature 4
Thomas Honegger

2. Troubadours, Trouvères and Courtly Love 2

3. http://www. db-thueringen.de/ content/top/ index.xml

4. Guilhem IX of Aquitaine = William IX of Aquitaine VII Count of Poitou (1071-1126/27) 11 poems

5. The conceptual kernel of Courtly Love
sincerity
loyalty
steadfastness in love
patient expectation of the gift of love
voluntary granting of sexual favours
love as an esteemed and gladdening experience
ennobling power of love

6. Farai chansoneta nueva

7. Topsfield’s 4 stages experimental phase (1100-1150)
growing influence of courtly doctrine (c )
Predominance of the ‘trobar leu’ (light and easy style) (c )
Destruction of Occitan society (Albigensian crusade 1209), love for the courtly lady > love for the Virgin (Topsfield, Leslie Troubadours and Love. Cambridge: CUP)

8. Bernart de Ventadorn (fl. 1150-80)
Poet of low extraction
Archetype of the courtly troubadour
Wrote almost exclusively ‘cansos’ (i.e. songs about love)

9. Bernart de Ventadorn (fl. 1150-80)
‘Non es meravelha s’eu chan’
Opening lines in the tradition of a ‘gap’
‘valor’
‘amor’ (l. 3, 7, 9) vs. ‘Amors’ (l. 21)

10. The God of Love
Andreas Capellanus’ De amore / De arte honeste amandi (c. 1186)
Le Roman de la Rose ( ) by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun

11. Guilhem vs. Bernart ‘hunger’ => active Pain of suffering a nuisance
Dying of love: medical reality
‘joi’ is found in the fulfillment of the love-relationship
Passive victim
Pain of suffering positive in itself
Dying of love: literary topos vs. spiritual death of non-lovers
‘joi’ comprises all aspects of loving

12. Amor de lonh
Jaufre Rudel: troubadour who fell in love with the Countess of Tripolis

13. 4 Stages of a Lover ‘fenhedor’ (admirer) ‘precador’ (petitioner)
‘entendedor’ (accepted petitioner)
‘drut’ (lover)

14. Key to the lady’s heart ‘merces’ (BdV, ll. 23-24)
grace, mercy, pity, sympathy
‘merces’ is the expression of an enduring predisposition to feel sympathy with anyone who is perceived as worthy through family or feudal relationships

15. Guilhem vs. Bernart 2 union of mutual joy between equals extrovert
self-assured
voluntary submission to the lady’s will
introvert
self-doubting

16. Types of Love Amour chevalresque Amor de lonh Amor segura (‘caritas’)
Amour courtois / Fin’ amors

17. Amour courtois Courtly love

18. Amour courtois 1
Gaston Paris, 1883, Lancelot du Lac (Le chevalier de la charette), Romania 12:
Amour courtois, amour courtois, amour chevaleresque

19. Amour courtois 2
Frappier, Jean ‘Vues sur les conceptions courtoises dans les littératures d’oc et d’oïl au XIIe siècle’. Cahiers de la civilisation médiévale 2:
Cortez’ amors in Peire d’ Auvergne (fl )

20. Amour courtois 3
amour courtois
bon amors
fin’ amors

21. Amour courtois 4 Gaston Paris defines amour courtois:
illicit and furtive
lover in a subordinate position, the lady behaves capriciously towards him

22. Amour courtois 5
lover tries to gain the lady’s love by means of every feat of prowess imaginable
Love is an art, a science, a virtue that has its rules just like chivalry and courtliness

23. Amour courtois 6 C.S. Lewis, 1936, Allegory of Love Humility Courtesy
Adultery
Religion of Love

24. Amour courtois 7 C.S. Lewis, 1936, Allegory of Love
“an unmistakable continuity connects the Provençal love song with the love poetry of the later Middle Ages, and thence, through Petrarch and many others, with that of the present day”

25. Amour courtois 8
Benton, John F «Clio and Venus: An Historical View of Medieval Love». In: Newman, F.X. (ed.) The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany: State University of New York Press,

26. Amour courtois 9
Robertson, D.W. Jr «The Concept of Courtly Love as an Impediment to the Understanding of Medieval Texts». In: Newman, F.X. (ed.) The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1-18.

27. Amour courtois 10
Robertson, D.W. Jr. (1968:17): “the subject has nothing to do with the Middle Ages, and its use as a governing concept can only be an impediment to our understanding of medieval texts.”

28. Amour courtois 11 Essentials become ‘accidentia’
adulterous nature of relationship
exalted position of lady
inaccessability of lady

29. Amour courtois 12 adulterous nature of relationship
Analysis of 503 texts => only in 3% does the poet/trobairitz speak of extramarital love with a straight face.

30. Amour courtois 13 exalted position of the lady
Analysis of 503 texts => only in 6% do we find reasons to believe that the poet’s lady enjoyed high rank in the literal sense.

31. The conceptual kernel of Courtly Love
sincerity
loyalty
steadfastness in love
patient expectation of the gift of love
voluntary granting of sexual favours
love as an esteemed and gladdening experience
ennobling power of love

32. Amour courtois 14
“one specific set of circumstances selected from the conventional literary elaboration of a fundamentally psychological conception of the nature of courtliness, and of the conditioning effects of that nature on the experience of love.” David Burnley, 1998, Courtliness and Literature in Medieval England, London: Longman, 174.

33. Amour courtois 15
Courtly love is one possible ‘cultural face’ of a basic predisposition; a face that varies its expression according to the changing cultural and social circumstances.

34. ‘L’autrier jost’una sebissa’ by Marcabru (fl. 1130-1149)
The Pastourelle
‘L’autrier jost’una sebissa’ by Marcabru (fl )

35. Defining elements
pastoral mode: country setting, heroine is a shepherdess
cast includes a man and a young woman
plot comprises a discovery and an attempted seduction
narrative and dialogue
point of view is that of the man

36. Pastourelle vs. canso
The Troubadour pastourelle is a ‘counter genre’ to the Troubadour canso and stands in a dialectic relationship with the canso.

37. Importance of the troubadour tradition
Focus is on love
it provides metaphors and images, in short, a language, to speak about love,
it provides the background of ideas (veneration of women, love as a refining and ennobling influence, etc.).

38. Middle English Lyrics

39. Blow, northerne wind
For hire love I carke and care, For hire love I droupne and dare, For hire love my blisse is bare, And all ich waxe won; For hire love in slep I slake, For hire love all night ich wake, For hire love mourning I make More then eny mon.

40. Care away, away, away
I am sory for her sake, Ic may well ete and drinke; Whanne ic slepe ic may not wake, So muche on her ic thenke. I am brout in suche a bale, And brout in suche a pine, Whanne ich rise up of my bed Me liste well to dine.

41. Topoi Heo me wol to dethe bring Longe er my day
Hire eye haveth wounded me, iwisse
Thow I be far out of her sight, I am her man both day and night

42. Honour, joy, helthe & plesaunce
And so you not displese with my desire, This wolde I you biseche, that of youre grace It like you, lo, to graunt me all this yere As in your hert to have a dwelling place, All be it never of so lite a space; For which as this the rente receive ye shall My love and service as in every case, With hert, body, my litel good and all.