Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry

Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry PDF Author: Jessica Rosenfeld
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139495259
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Jessica Rosenfeld provides a history of the ethics of medieval vernacular love poetry by tracing its engagement with the late medieval reception of Aristotle. Beginning with a history of the idea of enjoyment from Plato to Peter Abelard and the troubadours, the book then presents a literary and philosophical history of the medieval ethics of love, centered on the legacy of the Roman de la Rose. The chapters reveal that 'courtly love' was scarcely confined to what is often characterized as an ethic of sacrifice and deferral, but also engaged with Aristotelian ideas about pleasure and earthly happiness. Readings of Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, Dante, Deguileville and Langland show that poets were often markedly aware of the overlapping ethical languages of philosophy and erotic poetry. The study's conclusion places medieval poetry and philosophy in the context of psychoanalytic ethics, and argues for a re-evaluation of Lacan's ideas about courtly love.

Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry

Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry PDF Author: Jessica Rosenfeld
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139495259
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jessica Rosenfeld provides a history of the ethics of medieval vernacular love poetry by tracing its engagement with the late medieval reception of Aristotle. Beginning with a history of the idea of enjoyment from Plato to Peter Abelard and the troubadours, the book then presents a literary and philosophical history of the medieval ethics of love, centered on the legacy of the Roman de la Rose. The chapters reveal that 'courtly love' was scarcely confined to what is often characterized as an ethic of sacrifice and deferral, but also engaged with Aristotelian ideas about pleasure and earthly happiness. Readings of Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, Dante, Deguileville and Langland show that poets were often markedly aware of the overlapping ethical languages of philosophy and erotic poetry. The study's conclusion places medieval poetry and philosophy in the context of psychoanalytic ethics, and argues for a re-evaluation of Lacan's ideas about courtly love.

Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates

Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates PDF Author: Severin Valentinov Kitanov
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174169
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates examines the religious concept of enjoyment as discussed by scholastic theologians in the Latin Middle Ages. Severin Kitanov argues that central to the concept of beatific enjoyment (fruitio beatifica) is the distinction between the terms enjoyment and use (frui et uti) found in Saint Augustine’s treatise On Christian Learning. Peter Lombard, a twelfth-century Italian theologian, chose the enjoyment of God to serve as an opening topic of his Sentences and thereby set in motion an enduring scholastic discourse. Kitanov examines the nature of volition and the relationship between volition and cognition. He also explores theological debates on the definition of enjoyment: whether there are different kinds and degrees of enjoyment, whether natural reason unassisted by divine revelation can demonstrate that beatific enjoyment is possible, whether beatific enjoyment is the same as pleasure, whether it has an intrinsic cognitive character, and whether the enjoyment of God in heaven is a free or un-free act. Even though the concept of beatific enjoyment is essentially religious and theological, medieval scholastic authors discussed this concept by means of Aristotle’s logical and scientific apparatus and through the lens of metaphysics, physics, psychology, and virtue ethics. Bringing together Christian theological and Aristotelian scientific and philosophical approaches to enjoyment, Kitanov exposes the intricacy of the discourse and makes it intelligible for both students and scholars.

Boccaccio and Exemplary Literature

Boccaccio and Exemplary Literature PDF Author: Olivia Holmes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009224336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Olivia Holmes explores the Decameron's sceptical and sexually permissive contents against the backdrop of medieval religion and didacticism.

Readings in Medieval Textuality

Readings in Medieval Textuality PDF Author: Cristina Maria Cervone
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 184384446X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
III: Subjectivity and the Self -- 6. Re-reading Troilus in Response to Tony Spearing -- 7. The English Charles: Subjectivity, Texts and Culture -- IV: Reading for Form -- 8. The Inescapability of Form -- 9. Destroyer of Forms: Chaucer's Philomela -- 10. Gower's Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as Dits -- 11. Poems without Form? Maiden in the mor lay Revisited -- 12. "I" and "We" in Chaucer's Complaint unto Pity -- V: Epilogue -- 13. Two Appreciations of A.C. Spearing -- 14. Announcing a Literary Find Apparently Related to the Gawain-poet -- Works Cited -- Index

Medieval English Literature

Medieval English Literature PDF Author: Beatrice Fannon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350310077
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This volume brings together a wide range of original, scholarly essays on key figures and topics in medieval literature by leading academics. The volume examines the major authors such as Chaucer, Langland and the Gawain Poet, and covers key topics in medieval literature, including gender, class, courtly and popular culture, and religion. The volume seeks to provide a fresh and stimulating guide to medieval literature.

Landscape in Middle English Romance

Landscape in Middle English Romance PDF Author: Andrew M. Richmond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108913091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Our current ecological crises compel us not only to understand how contemporary media shapes our conceptions of human relationships with the environment, but also to examine the historical genealogies of such perspectives. Written during the onset of the Little Ice Age in Britain, Middle English romances provide a fascinating window into the worldviews of popular vernacular literature (and its audiences) at the close of the Middle Ages. Andrew M. Richmond shows how literary conventions of romances shaped and were in turn influenced by contemporary perspectives on the natural world. These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change. The natural world was a constant presence in the writing, thoughts, and lives of the audiences and authors of medieval English romance – and these close readings reveal that our environmental concerns go back further in our history and culture than we think.

From England to Bohemia

From England to Bohemia PDF Author: Michael Van Dussen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107016797
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The first examination of cultural exchanges between England and Bohemia after 1382, eventually leading to the suppression of heresy.

The Myth of Piers Plowman

The Myth of Piers Plowman PDF Author: Lawrence Warner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107783097
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Addressing the history of the production and reception of the great medieval poem, Piers Plowman, Lawrence Warner reveals the many ways in which scholars, editors and critics over the centuries created their own speculative narratives about the poem, which gradually came to be regarded as factually true. Warner begins by considering the possibility that Langland wrote a romance about a werewolf and bear-suited lovers, and he goes on to explore the methods of the poem's localization, and medieval readers' particular interest in its Latinity. Warner shows that the 'Protestant Piers' was a reaction against the poem's oral mode of transmission, reveals the extensive eighteenth-century textual scholarship on the poem and contextualizes its first modernization. This lively account of Piers Plowman challenges the way the poem has traditionally been read and understood. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.

Narrating the Crusades

Narrating the Crusades PDF Author: Lee Manion
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107057817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The first study to demonstrate how English literature continued to engage with crusading from medieval romances right through to Shakespeare.

Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature

Boccaccio and the Invention of Italian Literature PDF Author: Martin Eisner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110704166X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book examines Boccaccio's pivotal role in legitimizing the vernacular literature of Dante, Petrarch and Cavalcanti through argument, narrative and transcription.