1. Courtly Society in Medieval Europe

2. Social Classes SECULAR KING NOBLES KNIGHTS MERCHANTS PROFESSIONALS CRAFTSMEN PEASANTS freemen serfs ECCLESIASTICAL POPE CARDINALS BISHOPS ABBOTS PRIESTS MONKS SUMMONERS FRIARS PARDONERS NUNS PEASANTS lay brothers and sisters serfs

3. January Limbourg Bros. Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry

4. Chivalry  Chivalry was a peculiarity of the practice of war in medieval Europe.  The feudal knight was supposed to be devout, honest, selfless, just, brave, honorable, obedient, kind, charitable, generous, and kind to women.  complex rituals and rules

5. April Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry Courtly Love C.S. Lewis: “Humility, Courtesy, Adultery and the Religion of Love”

6. The "rules" for this game are roughly:  Worship of the chosen lady  Declaration of passionate devotion  Virtuous rejection by the lady  Renewed wooing with oaths of eternal fealty  Moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire  Heroic deeds of valor which win the lady's heart  Consummation of the secret love  Endless adventures and subterfuges  Tragic end

7. Troubadour Poetry  Origins in Provençal: Guillaume X considered to be first troubadour poet  Troubadours and Trobiaritz flourished between 1100 and 1350 and were attached to various courts in the south of France.  Innovations:  vernacular language  passionate love poetry influenced by Islamic love poetry  voice of amour courtois  love viewed as ennobling -- heightens one’s sensibility

8. Secular Lyric Poetry  Ballades: poems with at least three stanzas having the same rhyme and metrical schemes and repeating the same last line: refrain  Complaints  Reverdies: spring songs  Love Songs  Courtly Love  Aubades: poem or song about lovers parting at dawn

9. Minnesänger  Medieval German poets, who contributed to the development of the ideas of courtly love in the 13th and 14th centuries  German minnesänger were willing to incorporate the ideals of courtly love into a marriage framework -- see especially Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival Detail from the Minnesanger Manuscript

10. La Stil Nuova  Italian courtly poetry  Love for lady becomes sublimated  Protagonist of the stilnovist song.is a young scholar in love with a star  Calvacanti, Dante, Petrarch  Development of the sonnet

11. Courtly Love and the Roman Courtois  Countered Franco-German ideal of Holy Roman Empire with Charlemagne as saint  Nourished by  Celtic inspiration  Provençal eroticism  Islamic poetry  Theme: initiation, dedication, metamorphosis and absorption into a higher and fuller life  “Love is a cue for chivalric adventure, and chivalry is a means of deserving love”

12. Romance  Story of heroic adventure often encompassing courtly love: a chivalrous, heroic knight, who, abiding chivalry's strict codes, fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning favour with a beautiful but fickle princess.  Traditional Material  The matter of Rome: Alexander the Great  The matter of France: Charlemagne  The Matter of Britain: King Arthur Romance

13. Breton Lai  Short, rhymed tale of love and chivalry  Breton/Celtic troubadour influence  Courtliness and magic  Investigations into the intricacies of love and honor  Exploration of questions of sovereignty in relationships  The Lais of Marie de France –11thc.

14. Church’s response to Amour Courtois  Obviously disapproved of the cultic status of the lady and the tacit approval of adultery  Encouraged infusion of Christian ideals into literature:  Grail romances  Sublimated love: Dante’s Divina Commedia  Used the language of courtly love in the veneration of the Virgin Mary

15. Religious Lyric Poetry  Devotional songs  Hymns  Marian lyrics  Carols

16. Notre Dame du Chartres 1145-1220 Gothic Cathedral

17. Arthurian Legend  Historical: Romano-Celtic dux bellorum who fought the Anglo-Saxon invasions  Major texts:  12th century  Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain  Chretien de Troyes’ romances  13th-14th century: French prose romances  15th century: Malory

18. Perceval: The Story of the Grail by Chretien de Troyes, 12 th c.  First Grail Romance  Grail not here associated with the cup of the Last Supper or the cup used to catch Christ’s blood  A symbol of beauty and mystery, but not of religious devotion

19. 13th-14th Century: French Grail Romances  Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin, c.1202- 12  Didot Perceval: Perceval le Gallois ou le Conte du Graal, c.1210-20  Vulgate prose cycle: French Cistercian retelling of Estoire del Saint Graal, Estoire de Merlin, Lancelot du Lac, Queste del Saint Graal, and Mort Artu, c. 1215-30  Roman Du Graal and Lancelot Cycle: variant versions of the Vulgate Cycle, c. 1230-1320

20. Cistercian Spirituality  Transforms the grail into “the Holy Grail” -- the cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood dripping from Jesus’ wounds  Claims that Joseph of Arimathea brought the grail to Britain  Grail quests become the central activity of the Arthurian knights, especially Gawain, Perceval, and Lancelot: none of whom can achieve the grail because of their impurities.

21. Introduction of Galahad, son of Sir Lancelot and the maiden Elaine, who, because of his purity is able to attain “The Holy Grail”

22. Dante’s Divina Commedia

23. Dante greets Beatrice

24. Paolo and Francesca

25. Realism and the International Style Limbourg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures, 15th c. FEBRUARY JULY

26. Medieval Towns  Rise of the Middle Class – merchants, artisans, professionals – dependant on commercial exchanges  Guilds – trade “unions” – protected buyers and sellers  Charters of self-government – city-states with elected officials  Bourgeois vernacular literature  Fabliaux: humorous narratives  Novelle: realistic, contemporary stories  Dits: urban poetry

27. Antiphonale-Responsoriale 16th Century Choir Book from Iberia ANTIPHONAL LEAF 14th c., Italy, Tuscany(?) MUSIC

28. Guillaume de Machaut (b. around 1300-d. 1377)  A poet and innovative composer-- major figure in 14th c. French literature and music.  Apart from his celebrated Coronation Mass, his art was essentially of secular inspiration  Found its most finished expression in a series of Dits (stories in verse, interspersed with lyric and musical pieces).  The author celebrated the traditional themes of courtly love.

29. Fabliau  Originally a French form  A comic, bawdy tale with a plot that usually involves a cuckolded husband  Characters include peasants, tradesmen, greedy clergy, restless young wives, and young scholars  The plots are realistically motivated tricks and ruses.  The fabliaux thus present a lively image of everyday life among the middle and lower classes.

30. Bestiary and Beast Fable  A bestiary, or Bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts.  Bestiaries were illustrated volumes that described various real or imaginary animals, birds and even rocks.  The natural history and illustration of each beast were usually accompanied by a moral lesson.  A beast fable is a short tale with an explicit moral, often stated at the end as a maxim.  Characters in beast fables are personified animals Ram from the Aberdeen Bestiary

31. Novella  The novella is defined as a short, prose narrative, usually realistic and often satiric in tone.  Novella is an Italian word deriving from the feminine form of the word for new. The quality of newness in the novella is, perhaps, best associated with the contemporary subject matter of the stories  Novelle (pl.) are based on current local events -- with a viewpoint that ranges from amorous to humorous and satirical to political or moral.  The characters in a novella are placed in a realistic setting, complete with the rhythms of everyday life and conversation. Novella

32. Boccaccio’s Decameron  Collection of 100 novelle with a frame tale  Frame tale realistically details the Black Death in Italy  Novelle: short tales based set in realistic settings with a variety of characters from all social classes

33. Ten young people leave Florence during the Plague to find respite in the countryside. They decide to pass the time by telling stories to each other: Ten stories For Ten days: The Decameron

34. Geoffrey Chaucer  First great English poet  Early works reflect courtly concerns and ideals  Influenced by French and Italian models

35. The Canterbury Tales  Chaucer’s masterpiece  Frame: Pilgrimage from London to Canterbury  Brilliant portraits of English characters  Tales include many genres: romance, sermon, fabilaux, lai, etc.

36. From Christine de Pisan, 'Works'. Copyright ©, The British Library Christine de Pisan 1364-ca. 1430  First European professional female author  Prominent in the “Debate about Women”  Works include courtesy books, military treatises, dream visions and The Book of the City of Women

37. Citizens of The City of Ladies, 15th c. MS.

38. The Middle Ages in Europe faded as nation states solidified, the learning and art of the Renaissance emerged, and the unity of the Western Church was broken with the Protestant Reformation.