St. Augustine

• The human being is the center of warring elements: the unclean body and the purified soul • Visible world is an imperfect reflection of the divine order • Medieval literature, then, becomes allegorical (a literary device in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces).

• Matter, then, was the matrix in which God’s message was hidden • In Scripture, as well as in every natural and created thing, God’s invisible order might be discovered • For example, the medieval romance would be a cloaked message of divine revelation

Interpretation

• Reaching love and its purifying grace is worth the pain of an earthly death, dishonor, or severe pain • In love, one would wander aimlessly – Couldn’t concentrate on anything but the mental image of the beloved – Would lose appetite – Would lie awake at night

• Crusades begin in 1090: • Bring back new ideas from Islam – Literature – Architecture – Trade -- all those things in the film – Heroic stories of the war that chronicle • Historical fact • Christian Lore • Exciting fiction • New literate audience ready for exciting tales of Crusades in their own language (the vernacular)

Medieval Romance

• Medieval romances started in 12 th C: written in the vernacular while Church used Latin for services • Fiction, tale of love and adventure popular between 1100 and 1500 • 12 th century France was first romance in rhymed verse

The World of Chretien De Troyes

Lancelot 1170

Audience

• Small, courtly audience • Mostly women of the court • New dependence on written instead of oral tradition

Madonna Enthroned

1280-1290 by Cimabue 500 CE Byzantine

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints

1305 1310 by Giotto

Illicit Relationship

• Stories based on illicit relationship between man and woman of upper class • Arranged marriages to gain land • Romantic love was outside marriage

12

th

Century Verse Romance

Lancelot

• Written in vernacular French • Belongs to a cycle of stories re: semilegendary 6 th century Welsh Chieftain named Arthur •

Lancelot

was first • Filled with bloody combat, supernatural events, and romantic alliances • Code of courtly love

Courtly Love

• Cultivated in the courts of medieval nobility • Nobleman longs for unattainable woman • Establishes the courtly love tradition with rules of wooing and winning a lady • Laid the basis for romantic love in Western literature and life • Started manuals of conduct for European aristocrats

Code

• Love had a purifying and ennobling influence on the lover • To love was to suffer • Courtly love associated with distressing symptoms: inability to eat or sleep

Required of the Knight

• Prove his love for his lady • Perform daring and often impossible deeds • Willing to die for her • Creates the feminization of the chivalric ideal • Earlier: field battle with heroic idealism and loyalty between men

New Direction

• Arthurian romance redefined qualities of heroism in the direction of sentiment and sensuality • Lancelot fights not for country, nor for his lord, not for glory, but for love of his mistress • Contrast Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus

Conflict

• Kinds of love: – Fealty to King Arthur—his lord • Official state [arranged] marriage – Love of his lady • True love – Love of Jesus/Virgin Mary • Allegorical because of St. Augustine

• The love of woman equated in Christian mind with love for the Virgin Mary • As Mother of Heaven and of Christ, mediator between Judgment seat and horrors of hell, • Mary was recognized in the 12 th century as spiritual equivalent of lady of chilvary and crowned as Queen of Heaven • Songs sung to her; cathedrals dedicated to her • Cult of the Virgin developed