Ethics and Enjoyment in Late Medieval Poetry

Auteur

Jessica Rosenfeld is Assistant Professor of English at Washington University, St Louis.

Texte du rabat

Provides an essential ethical history of courtly love poetry by tracing its engagement with the late medieval reception of Aristotelian ethics.

Résumé
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.

Contenu

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.