Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry - Love After Aristotle

Informationen zum Autor Jessica Rosenfeld is Assistant Professor of English at Washington University, St Louis. Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung This is a study of the love poetry of late medieval Europe! looking in particular at the ways in which the Ethics of Aristotle! newly translated! influenced the ideas and expressions of courtly love. Inhaltsverzeichnis 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.

Product details

• Authors: Jessica Rosenfeld, Jessica (Washington University Rosenfeld, Rosenfeld Jessica
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 02.12.2010
• EAN: 9781107000117
• ISBN: 978-1-107-00011-7
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Medieval; Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature; Cambridge Studies in Medieval
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Literary studies: poetry and poets