European Love Literature

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so she can write my name in her contract.Now don't go thinking I must be drunkif I love my good lady;for without her I cannot live...In another of Guilhem's poems we find almost all the other themes that go to make up whatused to be called 'courtly love' (the expression is not used today, it is often called fin'amorsinstead), and which became 'Petrarchanism' in the renaissance:Already rejoicing, I begin to love,(...)for I am made better by one who is, beyond disputethe best a man ever saw or heard.(...)By her joy a sick man can recover,by her wrath one well can die,a wise man turn to childishness,a fine man see his beauty change,the most courtly man become a churl,and any churl become courtly.In these poems we are struck by the strong conflict and tension between joy and pain, privatefeelings and social roles. The woman's beauty has such power that it can bring the man life ordeath, depending on whether her response is kind or cruel, positive or negative. This soondeveloped into an extended parody of the Christian religion's language about mercy and grace,the medieval Love Religion game.A few years later the troubadour Cercamon could write paradoxical words of a kind that wasgoing to be repeated for centuries to come:I neither die, nor live, nor get well,I do not feel my suffering, and yet it is great suffering,because I cannot tell the future of her love,whether I shall have it, or when,for in her is all the pitywhich can raise me up or make me fall.I am pleased when she maddens mewhen she makes me stand with open mouth staring,I am pleased when she laughs at me,or makes a fool of me to my face, or my back;for after this bad the good will comevery quickly, if such is her pleasure.Finally, between 1150 and about 1180, Bernart de Ventadorn brought this poetic game to itsperfection:
In good faith, without deceit,I love the best and most beautiful.My heart sighs, my eyes weep,because I love her so much and I suffer for it.What else can I do, if Love takes hold of me,and no key but pity can open upthe prison where he has put me,and I find no sign of pity there?This love wounds my heartwith a sweet taste, so gently,I die of grief a hundred times a dayand a hundred times revive with joy.My pain seems beautiful,this pain is worth more than any pleasure;and since I find this bad so good,how good will be the good when this suffering is done.What is most striking is the paradoxical terminology; the poet takes such pleasure inexpressing his unhappiness. Love is so wonderful that even all the frustrations imposed bysocial inequality, and the near-impossibility of union, cannot weaken it. The poems, though,are clearly 'complaints' in the sense that they are veiled attacks on the lady's present coldness,and represent hope that she will later accept the offered love. The pain is used as apsychological weapon in an attempt to compell the woman to yield to the man's will.Eleanor of AquitaineIn one poem Bernart's lover says that he is suffering more than Tristan did in his love for'Izeut la blonda.' To understand this, we have to turn to Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204);she was Guilhem IX's grand-daughter, she probably brought Bernart de Ventadorn to hercourt in Poitiers in the 1170s. She married King Louis VII of France in 1137 when she was15, but in 1152 she divorced him and married Henry Plantagenet, who soon after becameKing Henry II of England. One of her daughters by the first marriage, Marie, married theCount of Champagne in 1159, and set up a court in Troyes modelled on her mother's inPoitiers, and both courts were centres of literary and artistic culture.Just at this time continental French writers encountered Celtic folktales: in 1131 inEngland Geoffrey of Monmouth completed his Historia Regum Britanniae. This introducedthe heroic Celtic figure of Arthur to Europe; in the latter part of the story Arthur's queen,Guinevere, is reported to have left Arthur and to be living in adultery with his enemy,Mordred. Out of this ancient legend, later writers were to make a new myth.Geoffrey's sources were partly written, partly oral (Monmouth is caught betweenWales and England). Later, story-tellers from Britany and Wales seem to have toured Francetelling other old Celtic tales to entertain people in the palaces. From them, perhaps, Chretiende Troyes got his material.
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Page 3: Full textIntroductionTristan and Is
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Page 9 and 10: Dante AlighieriThen romantic love e
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European Love Literature

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