Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry: Love after Aristotle: 85 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 85)
Cambridge University Press, 12/2/2010
EAN 9781107000117, ISBN10: 1107000114
Hardcover, 256 pages, 22.9 x 15.5 x 2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
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.
Introduction
love after Aristotle
1. Enjoyment
a medieval history
2. Narcissus after Aristotle
love and ethics in Le Roman de la Rose
3. Metamorphoses of pleasure in the fourteenth century Dit Amoureux
4. Love's knowledge
fabliau, allegory, and fourteenth-century anti-intellectualism
5. On human happiness
Dante, Chaucer, and the felicity of friendship
Coda
Chaucer's philosophical women.