Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages / Arthurian and Courtly Cultures (PDF)

HELEN COONEY is Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance English, Trinity College, Dublin. She is the editor of Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin, 2001) and of several articles on Chaucer and Spenser.

'This account of Middle English love literature, also of its historical background and continental context, is impressively comprehensive and illuminating. Beside lively discussions of English representations of the characteristically medieval but hotly debated courtly love mode other hitherto less recognized modes are brought into focus, especially in valuable essays dealing with early Middle English and Anglo-Norman romances.Among many excellent chapters in this volume is the editor's own subtle and beautifully written contribution on love and aesthetics at the end of the Middle English period.' - Thomas G. Duncan, University of St Andrews

'Cooney has here assembled a distinguished array of medievalists who, in a wide-ranging series of essays, address the big questions surrounding the debate on love in the Middle Ages. This is a very strong collection and will certainly be widely consulted.' - J. A. Burrow, Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol

'The term 'courtly love' will not be readily recuperated from the scorn that has been heaped upon it and the misrepresentations to which it has been subjected, but the medieval cult of idealized sexual love is here, in this book, definitively restored to its central position in the understanding of medieval English literature. A series of probing essays demonstrates how the courtly cult of 'being in love,' in all its multiplicities, variously expressive of male or female subjectivity, and oriented according to whatever moral and cultural conventions, overrode constraint and gave narrative its very heart-beat.' - Derek A. Pearsall, Harvard University (retired)

'This collection of essays presents a series of lively reassessments of English and Scottish writings on love in the Middle Ages. It is both insightful and accessible.' - Douglas Gray, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language Emeritus, University of Oxford