Love And Death In Medieval French And Occitan Courtly Literature Hardcover

Simon Gaunt

Some of medieval culture's most arresting images and stories inextricably associate love and death. Thus the troubadour Jaufre Rudel dies in the arms of the countess of Tripoli, having loved her from afar without ever having seen her. Or in Marie de France's Chevrefoil, Tristan and Iseult's fatal love is hauntingly symbolized by the fatally entwined honeysuckle and hazel. And who could forget the ethereal spectacle of the Damoisele of Escalot's body carried to Camelot on a supernatural funerary boat with a letter on her breast explaining how her unrequited love for Lancelot killed her? Medieval literature is fascinated with the idea that love may be a fatal affliction. Indeed, it is frequently suggested that true love requires sacrifice, that you must be ready to die for, from, and in love. Love, in other words, is represented, sometimes explicitly, as a form of martyrdom, a notion that is repeatedly reinforced by courtly literature's borrowing of religious vocabulary and imagery. The paradigm of the martyr to love has of course remained compelling in the early modern and modern period. This book seeks to explore what is at stake in medieval literature's preoccupation with love's martyrdom. Informed by modern theoretical approaches, particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis and Jacques Derrida's work on ethics, it offers new readings of a wide range of French and Occitan courtly texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and argues that a new secular ethics of desire emerges from courtly literature because of its fascination with death. This book also examines the interplay between lyric and romance in courtly literary culture and shows how courtly literature's predilection for sacrificial desire imposes a repressive sex-gender system that may then be subverted by fictional women and queers who either fail to die on cue, or who die in troublesome and disruptive ways.

9780199272075

English

Oxford University Press, USA

13 Apr 2006

248

Simon Gaunt is Professor of French Language and Literature and Head of the French Department at King's College London.

impeccably scholarly... it is well worth reading * Notes and Queries * ...the argument itself is masterfully deployed...Gaunt explicates a complicated concept with remarkable clarity and insight. * Kathy M. Krause, MLR, 103.1 * Gaunt's bold approach to provide fresh readings of canonical texts continues apace with this volume devoted to an arresting preoccupation, the medieval motif of love as a fatal affliction. * French Review * This book is a triumph... Gaunt raises some crucial questions about the representation of love in western culture, and provides an array of scintillating answers...an exhilarating read * Medium Aevum, Volume LXXVI * ...A well-balanced, focused and challenging book that should prove an accessible source of close textual readings for medievalists, and of thought-provoking interpretations of 'courtly love' literature to a broad spectrum of readers. * Catherine Leglu, French Studies * ....the work's salient features and virtues....a mischievous humor that stays with him throughout...he holds himself accountable in his analyses, his intellectual honesty benef...show more