Libby Garshowitz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813036496
- eISBN:
- 9780813041810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813036496.003.0012
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The benefits reaped by the Jews under Arab Islam at its zenith through the enrichment of medieval Hebrew and poetic creativity—infused by Arab poetry—compares well with the progress they made in ...
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The benefits reaped by the Jews under Arab Islam at its zenith through the enrichment of medieval Hebrew and poetic creativity—infused by Arab poetry—compares well with the progress they made in science and the professions. This is lucidly corroborated by this chapter where the text refers to Andalusia (Spain) as the place this decisive encounter took place. This discussion is focused on the transmission of Arabic culture in Hebrew guise into the Jewish communities of twelfth-century Christendom. Of particular importance is the love poetry of Jacob ben Elazar (c. 1170–1235), author of a ten-chapter collection of love stories composed in about 1233. The chapter singles out Chaptes 7 and 9 and points out that Jacob ben Elazar's poetry testifies to his “virtuosity and adroitness in the Hebrew language” and the contribution of Arabic poetry in this context.Less
The benefits reaped by the Jews under Arab Islam at its zenith through the enrichment of medieval Hebrew and poetic creativity—infused by Arab poetry—compares well with the progress they made in science and the professions. This is lucidly corroborated by this chapter where the text refers to Andalusia (Spain) as the place this decisive encounter took place. This discussion is focused on the transmission of Arabic culture in Hebrew guise into the Jewish communities of twelfth-century Christendom. Of particular importance is the love poetry of Jacob ben Elazar (c. 1170–1235), author of a ten-chapter collection of love stories composed in about 1233. The chapter singles out Chaptes 7 and 9 and points out that Jacob ben Elazar's poetry testifies to his “virtuosity and adroitness in the Hebrew language” and the contribution of Arabic poetry in this context.
Martin McLaughlin, Letizia Panizza, and Peter Hainsworth (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. ...
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Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.Less
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.
David M. Carr
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199742608
- eISBN:
- 9780199918737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742608.003.0016
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter adopts criteria developed in chapter 15 (on Proverbs) to assess the extent to which two other purportedly Solomonic books, Song of Songs and Qohelet, might contain early pre-exilic ...
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This chapter adopts criteria developed in chapter 15 (on Proverbs) to assess the extent to which two other purportedly Solomonic books, Song of Songs and Qohelet, might contain early pre-exilic materials. The conclusion is that the evidence for this is better for Song of Songs than for Qohelet. Though elements of Song of Songs may have been added over time, it shows unambivalent dependence on New Kingdom period Egyptian love poetry, and appears to have been the source of several formulations found in Hosea and Deuteronomy. In contrast, the main link of Qohelet to a demonstrable non-Israelite tradition, its links to the song of the alewife in the Old Babylonian edition of Gilgamesh, is relatively isolated. In addition, Qohelet’s orientation to monarchal institutions and other indicators suggest a more likely post-exilic date.Less
This chapter adopts criteria developed in chapter 15 (on Proverbs) to assess the extent to which two other purportedly Solomonic books, Song of Songs and Qohelet, might contain early pre-exilic materials. The conclusion is that the evidence for this is better for Song of Songs than for Qohelet. Though elements of Song of Songs may have been added over time, it shows unambivalent dependence on New Kingdom period Egyptian love poetry, and appears to have been the source of several formulations found in Hosea and Deuteronomy. In contrast, the main link of Qohelet to a demonstrable non-Israelite tradition, its links to the song of the alewife in the Old Babylonian edition of Gilgamesh, is relatively isolated. In addition, Qohelet’s orientation to monarchal institutions and other indicators suggest a more likely post-exilic date.
Sudhir Kakar and John Munder Ross
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198072560
- eISBN:
- 9780199082124
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198072560.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter focuses on the paradigmatic love story of Radha and Krishna, widely considered in Hindu cultural imagination as a parable of the human longing for and union with God. The liaison of ...
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This chapter focuses on the paradigmatic love story of Radha and Krishna, widely considered in Hindu cultural imagination as a parable of the human longing for and union with God. The liaison of Radha and Krishna has been portrayed in thousands of exquisite miniature paintings depicting the lovers in separation and union, longing and abandonment. The legend is not a narrative in the sense of an orderly progression whose protagonists have a shared past and are progressing towards a tragic and happy future. Tender and cheerful, and not tragic, it is rather an evocation and elaboration of the here-and-now of passion. While the figures of Radha and Krishna are linked to the heroine and hero of classical love poetry in many ways, they are primarily products of the bhakti movement, which is known for its erotic mood.Less
This chapter focuses on the paradigmatic love story of Radha and Krishna, widely considered in Hindu cultural imagination as a parable of the human longing for and union with God. The liaison of Radha and Krishna has been portrayed in thousands of exquisite miniature paintings depicting the lovers in separation and union, longing and abandonment. The legend is not a narrative in the sense of an orderly progression whose protagonists have a shared past and are progressing towards a tragic and happy future. Tender and cheerful, and not tragic, it is rather an evocation and elaboration of the here-and-now of passion. While the figures of Radha and Krishna are linked to the heroine and hero of classical love poetry in many ways, they are primarily products of the bhakti movement, which is known for its erotic mood.
Ardis Butterfield
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199574865
- eISBN:
- 9780191722127
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574865.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
This chapter develops the argument of Chapter 5 by comparing groups of ballades, written in both English, French and Anglo‐French, on the continent and on the island, specifically composed in the ...
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This chapter develops the argument of Chapter 5 by comparing groups of ballades, written in both English, French and Anglo‐French, on the continent and on the island, specifically composed in the ‘international’ language of love. Reading across and between Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, Gower, and Graunson, teaches us to move on from the notion of source and ‘original’, or impersonal intertextuality, towards a much more flexible sense of love poetry as a deeply and multiply layered linguistic process, that passes from a large area of mutual self‐reference up through to examples of individual retorts and ripostes. Such a process cannot be easily characterized as ‘English’ or ‘French’: instead, poets are working with a much less rigid notion of linguistic — and literary — difference.Less
This chapter develops the argument of Chapter 5 by comparing groups of ballades, written in both English, French and Anglo‐French, on the continent and on the island, specifically composed in the ‘international’ language of love. Reading across and between Machaut, Froissart, Chaucer, Gower, and Graunson, teaches us to move on from the notion of source and ‘original’, or impersonal intertextuality, towards a much more flexible sense of love poetry as a deeply and multiply layered linguistic process, that passes from a large area of mutual self‐reference up through to examples of individual retorts and ripostes. Such a process cannot be easily characterized as ‘English’ or ‘French’: instead, poets are working with a much less rigid notion of linguistic — and literary — difference.
R. F. Foster
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264249
- eISBN:
- 9780191734045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264249.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture traces W. B. Yeats' preoccupation with the changing forms of death throughout his life, from his fin-de-siécle love-poetry to his poems of death. These poems of death were linked to his ...
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This lecture traces W. B. Yeats' preoccupation with the changing forms of death throughout his life, from his fin-de-siécle love-poetry to his poems of death. These poems of death were linked to his interest in Celtic legend, Irish intellectual influences and conjunctions, and magical ritual and psychic research. The lecture considers Yeats' approach to death in his later work, concluding with his creation of a structured canon of work in the light of his own death and the work that he wrote on his deathbed.Less
This lecture traces W. B. Yeats' preoccupation with the changing forms of death throughout his life, from his fin-de-siécle love-poetry to his poems of death. These poems of death were linked to his interest in Celtic legend, Irish intellectual influences and conjunctions, and magical ritual and psychic research. The lecture considers Yeats' approach to death in his later work, concluding with his creation of a structured canon of work in the light of his own death and the work that he wrote on his deathbed.
Bonnie Costello
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691172811
- eISBN:
- 9781400887873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691172811.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter looks at some of the ways the “we” of love poetry expands to perform a civil or didactic function, and it connects this function to the puzzle of love's number, tense, and grammar, which ...
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This chapter looks at some of the ways the “we” of love poetry expands to perform a civil or didactic function, and it connects this function to the puzzle of love's number, tense, and grammar, which constitutes the subject matter of many love poems. Plato argued that eros could be a rung on the ladder to other forms of love. Love's number may involve not only addition but also an exponential process, in sublimation “mounting upwards from one to two, and from two to all fair forms.” But a great deal of thinking since has set romantic love at odds, not only with truth and reason, but with social and ethical thinking. Later philosophers saw romantic love as exclusive and private, indifferent or even hostile to the world beyond itself and inscrutable to that world.Less
This chapter looks at some of the ways the “we” of love poetry expands to perform a civil or didactic function, and it connects this function to the puzzle of love's number, tense, and grammar, which constitutes the subject matter of many love poems. Plato argued that eros could be a rung on the ladder to other forms of love. Love's number may involve not only addition but also an exponential process, in sublimation “mounting upwards from one to two, and from two to all fair forms.” But a great deal of thinking since has set romantic love at odds, not only with truth and reason, but with social and ethical thinking. Later philosophers saw romantic love as exclusive and private, indifferent or even hostile to the world beyond itself and inscrutable to that world.
Luke Ferretter
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625093
- eISBN:
- 9780748671694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625093.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses the relationship between the poetry and the fiction that Plath was writing at the same time during the different periods of her creative career. The first section examines the ...
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This chapter discusses the relationship between the poetry and the fiction that Plath was writing at the same time during the different periods of her creative career. The first section examines the poetry and fiction of 1954–55, in which Plath deals with the unresolved pain of childhood events in her fiction, but with the more complex pain of love in her poetry. This greater complexity continues in the poetry she writes whilst working on her first novel Falcon Yard in 1957. The women of Plath's fiction are much more in control of their relationships to men than the women of her poetry. During her Cambridge period, her fiction deals more explicitly with the politics of relationship, as a comparison between her story ‘The Wishing Box’ and her poems on imagination and reality show. As she begins to write some of her finest short fiction in Boston, however, a greater psychological complexity emerges in stories such as ‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ than in the psychological poems of the same period. Finally, a comparison of the few poems Plath wrote whilst writing The Bell Jar and of the many she wrote whilst writing Double Exposure shed light on the concerns of those novels.Less
This chapter discusses the relationship between the poetry and the fiction that Plath was writing at the same time during the different periods of her creative career. The first section examines the poetry and fiction of 1954–55, in which Plath deals with the unresolved pain of childhood events in her fiction, but with the more complex pain of love in her poetry. This greater complexity continues in the poetry she writes whilst working on her first novel Falcon Yard in 1957. The women of Plath's fiction are much more in control of their relationships to men than the women of her poetry. During her Cambridge period, her fiction deals more explicitly with the politics of relationship, as a comparison between her story ‘The Wishing Box’ and her poems on imagination and reality show. As she begins to write some of her finest short fiction in Boston, however, a greater psychological complexity emerges in stories such as ‘Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams’ than in the psychological poems of the same period. Finally, a comparison of the few poems Plath wrote whilst writing The Bell Jar and of the many she wrote whilst writing Double Exposure shed light on the concerns of those novels.
Robert Ellrodt
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117384
- eISBN:
- 9780191670923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117384.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant ...
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New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant inclinations of his own generation. The poets of the Donne generation rejected the floridness, mellifluousness, and melodiousness of ‘golden’ verse and ‘sugared’ sonnets. The search for manly attitudes and the ‘manly style’, related to a search for truth and meaning, was, indeed, the dominant trend in the Donne generation. It accounts for the change of mood and expression in love poetry. In literary expression a desire of change for the sake of change (a desire paraded in Donne's elegy so entitled) was a prominent feature of this generation. In their cult of wit the poets of the Donne generation were interested in new forms of wit, displayed in the epigram, the paradox, and the rhetorical figures that create surprise and call for a quick apprehension of thought.Less
New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant inclinations of his own generation. The poets of the Donne generation rejected the floridness, mellifluousness, and melodiousness of ‘golden’ verse and ‘sugared’ sonnets. The search for manly attitudes and the ‘manly style’, related to a search for truth and meaning, was, indeed, the dominant trend in the Donne generation. It accounts for the change of mood and expression in love poetry. In literary expression a desire of change for the sake of change (a desire paraded in Donne's elegy so entitled) was a prominent feature of this generation. In their cult of wit the poets of the Donne generation were interested in new forms of wit, displayed in the epigram, the paradox, and the rhetorical figures that create surprise and call for a quick apprehension of thought.
Teodolinda Barolini
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227037
- eISBN:
- 9780823241019
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823227037.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Dante is heir to a complex and lively Italian lyric tradition that had its roots in the Provencal poetry nourished by the rivalling courts of twelfth-century southern France. The conventions of ...
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Dante is heir to a complex and lively Italian lyric tradition that had its roots in the Provencal poetry nourished by the rivalling courts of twelfth-century southern France. The conventions of troubadour love poetry—based on the notion of the lover's feudal service to “midons” (Italian, Madonna), his lady, from whom he expects a “guerdon” (Italian, guiderdone), or reward—were successfully transplanted to the court of Frederick II in Palermo. Palermo became the capital of the first group of Italian vernacular lyric poets, the so-called Sicilian School; the centralized imperial court did not offer a suitable venue for the transplantation of Provence's contentious political poetry, which was left behind.Less
Dante is heir to a complex and lively Italian lyric tradition that had its roots in the Provencal poetry nourished by the rivalling courts of twelfth-century southern France. The conventions of troubadour love poetry—based on the notion of the lover's feudal service to “midons” (Italian, Madonna), his lady, from whom he expects a “guerdon” (Italian, guiderdone), or reward—were successfully transplanted to the court of Frederick II in Palermo. Palermo became the capital of the first group of Italian vernacular lyric poets, the so-called Sicilian School; the centralized imperial court did not offer a suitable venue for the transplantation of Provence's contentious political poetry, which was left behind.
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853235064
- eISBN:
- 9781846314254
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853235064.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines the treatment of the Holocaust in the love poetry of Tony Harrison. It suggests that Harrison follows that of historicist writing about love that explores its function in the ...
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This chapter examines the treatment of the Holocaust in the love poetry of Tony Harrison. It suggests that Harrison follows that of historicist writing about love that explores its function in the past and its relevance to the present. It considers the influence of Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse on Harrison's amorous poems and suggests that his account of the amorous in the context of the atomic era is a synthesis of sex and the Cold War. This chapter analyses some of his relevant works including The Bedbug, The Pocket Wars of Peanuts Joe and The Curtain Catullus and describes the amorous presence in his so-called American poems.Less
This chapter examines the treatment of the Holocaust in the love poetry of Tony Harrison. It suggests that Harrison follows that of historicist writing about love that explores its function in the past and its relevance to the present. It considers the influence of Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse on Harrison's amorous poems and suggests that his account of the amorous in the context of the atomic era is a synthesis of sex and the Cold War. This chapter analyses some of his relevant works including The Bedbug, The Pocket Wars of Peanuts Joe and The Curtain Catullus and describes the amorous presence in his so-called American poems.
Abdelwahab Meddeb
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231140
- eISBN:
- 9780823237197
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823231140.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
Abdelwahab Meddeb is concerned with the roots and history of Islam and with crossings, like his own, between Islam and Europe. White Traverses is a poetic memoir about growing up in Tunisia and the ...
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Abdelwahab Meddeb is concerned with the roots and history of Islam and with crossings, like his own, between Islam and Europe. White Traverses is a poetic memoir about growing up in Tunisia and the contrasts between Islamic and European influences. In it, the intense colors and blinding whites of the Maghreb interweave with the rich traditions of French poetic discourse. In Africa as in Europe, white designates purity. Yet the complex Mediterranean streams of culture that flow together in Tunis problematize this myth. Meddeb captures their white refractions in vignettes that teach us the truth of the coincidence of contraries, of how the impure lodges in the pure. Tombeau of Ibn Arabi is a series of prose poems that draw their inspiration from the great Sufi poet of mediaeval Andalusia, Ibn Arabi, whose fervent love poetry both scandalized and transformed Islamic culture, and from Dante, who learned from Ibn Arabi a poetry of sensual love as initiation into spiritual experience. It seeks to show how a text written in the present day can maintain a link with the great dead. Ibn Arabi and Dante are two symbolic figures confirming the author's twofold spiritual genealogy—Arabic and European.Less
Abdelwahab Meddeb is concerned with the roots and history of Islam and with crossings, like his own, between Islam and Europe. White Traverses is a poetic memoir about growing up in Tunisia and the contrasts between Islamic and European influences. In it, the intense colors and blinding whites of the Maghreb interweave with the rich traditions of French poetic discourse. In Africa as in Europe, white designates purity. Yet the complex Mediterranean streams of culture that flow together in Tunis problematize this myth. Meddeb captures their white refractions in vignettes that teach us the truth of the coincidence of contraries, of how the impure lodges in the pure. Tombeau of Ibn Arabi is a series of prose poems that draw their inspiration from the great Sufi poet of mediaeval Andalusia, Ibn Arabi, whose fervent love poetry both scandalized and transformed Islamic culture, and from Dante, who learned from Ibn Arabi a poetry of sensual love as initiation into spiritual experience. It seeks to show how a text written in the present day can maintain a link with the great dead. Ibn Arabi and Dante are two symbolic figures confirming the author's twofold spiritual genealogy—Arabic and European.
Katherine Wasdin
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190869090
- eISBN:
- 9780190869120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190869090.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction lays necessary factual and theoretical groundwork for the chapters to follow by describing the social contexts of the ancient wedding and love affair. The wedding is a markedly ...
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The introduction lays necessary factual and theoretical groundwork for the chapters to follow by describing the social contexts of the ancient wedding and love affair. The wedding is a markedly erotic moment, but love affairs, while often sharing or borrowing the discourse of the wedding, are unlikely to end in marriage. Greek and Roman norms differ at times, but the literary tradition provides continuity across cultures. In both societies, the wedding is more eroticized than the marriage. The poems associated with the wedding and the affair can be classified as types of occasional verse, deeply connected with specific social contexts. They frequently allude to details of the wedding ritual or of the symposium and its aftermath to suggest verisimilitude. Interaction between poetic discourses therefore implies interaction between social occasions.Less
The introduction lays necessary factual and theoretical groundwork for the chapters to follow by describing the social contexts of the ancient wedding and love affair. The wedding is a markedly erotic moment, but love affairs, while often sharing or borrowing the discourse of the wedding, are unlikely to end in marriage. Greek and Roman norms differ at times, but the literary tradition provides continuity across cultures. In both societies, the wedding is more eroticized than the marriage. The poems associated with the wedding and the affair can be classified as types of occasional verse, deeply connected with specific social contexts. They frequently allude to details of the wedding ritual or of the symposium and its aftermath to suggest verisimilitude. Interaction between poetic discourses therefore implies interaction between social occasions.
Lewis Beer
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813062419
- eISBN:
- 9780813053080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813062419.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter aims to illustrate three simple points: first, that medieval love-debate poetry is centrally concerned with a conflict between idealism and pragmatism; second, that Machaut’s Jugement du ...
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This chapter aims to illustrate three simple points: first, that medieval love-debate poetry is centrally concerned with a conflict between idealism and pragmatism; second, that Machaut’s Jugement du roy de Behaigne foregrounds this aspect of the love-debate genre and explores its implications; and third, that Gower’s Confessio Amantis is also structured around the juxtaposition of idealistic and pragmatic views of love. While the two narrative poems may seem to distinguish themselves from earlier love-debates by “settling” the conflict presented with a conclusive judgment, they also retain the fundamental ambivalence of the un-concluded jeux-partis. Machaut and Gower invest sympathetically in the idea that worldly pleasures, and specifically the pleasures of love, can be idealized and given enduring value, and the energy and persistence of this fantasy constitute a significant part of these poems’ appeal. It is a fantasy nonetheless, because both poets also figure the attempt to align love with virtue as essentially futile.Less
This chapter aims to illustrate three simple points: first, that medieval love-debate poetry is centrally concerned with a conflict between idealism and pragmatism; second, that Machaut’s Jugement du roy de Behaigne foregrounds this aspect of the love-debate genre and explores its implications; and third, that Gower’s Confessio Amantis is also structured around the juxtaposition of idealistic and pragmatic views of love. While the two narrative poems may seem to distinguish themselves from earlier love-debates by “settling” the conflict presented with a conclusive judgment, they also retain the fundamental ambivalence of the un-concluded jeux-partis. Machaut and Gower invest sympathetically in the idea that worldly pleasures, and specifically the pleasures of love, can be idealized and given enduring value, and the energy and persistence of this fantasy constitute a significant part of these poems’ appeal. It is a fantasy nonetheless, because both poets also figure the attempt to align love with virtue as essentially futile.
Cynthia N. Nazarian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501705229
- eISBN:
- 9781501708268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705229.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter analyzes Petrarch's Canzoniere alongside the first French Petrarchan sequence, Maurice Scève's Délie: Object de plus haulte vertu (1544). It examines Petrarch's wretchedness, isolation, ...
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This chapter analyzes Petrarch's Canzoniere alongside the first French Petrarchan sequence, Maurice Scève's Délie: Object de plus haulte vertu (1544). It examines Petrarch's wretchedness, isolation, and unrequited love to show how his suffering might be interpreted as productive, and more specifically how proclaiming his abjection serves to paradoxically strengthen and shield his voice. The chapter argues that the critical potential of Petrarch's position is rooted in his adaptation of classical parrhēsia, the ancient Greek trope of free, bold political speech. It also considers how Scève reshaped Petrarch's incorporeal, symbolic images of Cupid's arrows and the Beloved's gaze into an idiom of intensified violence that altered the terms of love poetry itself. It explains how Scève established a polarized schema that could channel contestation and insurrection from within the lover's wretchedness.Less
This chapter analyzes Petrarch's Canzoniere alongside the first French Petrarchan sequence, Maurice Scève's Délie: Object de plus haulte vertu (1544). It examines Petrarch's wretchedness, isolation, and unrequited love to show how his suffering might be interpreted as productive, and more specifically how proclaiming his abjection serves to paradoxically strengthen and shield his voice. The chapter argues that the critical potential of Petrarch's position is rooted in his adaptation of classical parrhēsia, the ancient Greek trope of free, bold political speech. It also considers how Scève reshaped Petrarch's incorporeal, symbolic images of Cupid's arrows and the Beloved's gaze into an idiom of intensified violence that altered the terms of love poetry itself. It explains how Scève established a polarized schema that could channel contestation and insurrection from within the lover's wretchedness.
Ann Moss
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199249879
- eISBN:
- 9780191697838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249879.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter provides an exploration of ‘self-narration’. The chapter concentrates on love poetry, a kind of discourse in which the first person pronoun predominates and turns attention on itself. ...
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This chapter provides an exploration of ‘self-narration’. The chapter concentrates on love poetry, a kind of discourse in which the first person pronoun predominates and turns attention on itself. Other literary works that are discussed in this chapter are prayers, hymns, and even sermons.Less
This chapter provides an exploration of ‘self-narration’. The chapter concentrates on love poetry, a kind of discourse in which the first person pronoun predominates and turns attention on itself. Other literary works that are discussed in this chapter are prayers, hymns, and even sermons.
Cynthia N. Nazarian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501705229
- eISBN:
- 9781501708268
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book takes an in-depth look at the widespread language of violence and abjection in early modern European love poetry. Beginning in fourteenth-century Italy, the book shows how Petrarch ...
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This book takes an in-depth look at the widespread language of violence and abjection in early modern European love poetry. Beginning in fourteenth-century Italy, the book shows how Petrarch established a pattern of inequality between suffering poet and exalted Beloved rooted in political parrhēsia. Sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century French and English poets reshaped Petrarch's model into an idiom of extravagant brutality coded to their own historical circumstances. The book argues that these poets exaggerated the posture of the downtrodden lover, adapting the rhetoric of powerless desire to forge a new “countersovereignty” from within the heart of vulnerability—a potentially revolutionary position through which to challenge cultural, religious, and political authority. Creating a secular equivalent to the martyr, early modern sonneteers crafted a voice that was both critical and unstoppable because it suffered. The book tracks the development of the counter-sovereign voice from Francesco Petrarca to Maurice Scève, Joachim du Bellay, Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare. Through interdisciplinary and transnational analyses, the text reads early modern sonnets as sites of contestation and collaboration and rewrites the relationship between early modern literary forms.Less
This book takes an in-depth look at the widespread language of violence and abjection in early modern European love poetry. Beginning in fourteenth-century Italy, the book shows how Petrarch established a pattern of inequality between suffering poet and exalted Beloved rooted in political parrhēsia. Sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century French and English poets reshaped Petrarch's model into an idiom of extravagant brutality coded to their own historical circumstances. The book argues that these poets exaggerated the posture of the downtrodden lover, adapting the rhetoric of powerless desire to forge a new “countersovereignty” from within the heart of vulnerability—a potentially revolutionary position through which to challenge cultural, religious, and political authority. Creating a secular equivalent to the martyr, early modern sonneteers crafted a voice that was both critical and unstoppable because it suffered. The book tracks the development of the counter-sovereign voice from Francesco Petrarca to Maurice Scève, Joachim du Bellay, Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare. Through interdisciplinary and transnational analyses, the text reads early modern sonnets as sites of contestation and collaboration and rewrites the relationship between early modern literary forms.
John Freccero
Danielle Callegari and Melissa Swain (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823264278
- eISBN:
- 9780823266760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823264278.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines the poetry of John Donne. Among English poets who underwent the influence of Italian love poetry of the Renaissance, Donne stands out as one who sought to reconcile the errant ...
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This chapter examines the poetry of John Donne. Among English poets who underwent the influence of Italian love poetry of the Renaissance, Donne stands out as one who sought to reconcile the errant soul to its body once more. This meant rescuing human love from both the angelic mysticism and the erotic formalism of the Italian tradition and restoring it to its proper domain: humanity. Donne was primarily concerned neither with the angel nor with the beast, but rather with the battlefield separating them, long since vacated by the Italians. Insofar as he defended that middle ground in the question of human love, his poetry marked a return to a more “medieval” sensibility. The chapter argues that his most famous image, that of the compass in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” protests, precisely in the name of incarnation, against the neo-Petrarchan and Neoplatonic dehumanization of love.Less
This chapter examines the poetry of John Donne. Among English poets who underwent the influence of Italian love poetry of the Renaissance, Donne stands out as one who sought to reconcile the errant soul to its body once more. This meant rescuing human love from both the angelic mysticism and the erotic formalism of the Italian tradition and restoring it to its proper domain: humanity. Donne was primarily concerned neither with the angel nor with the beast, but rather with the battlefield separating them, long since vacated by the Italians. Insofar as he defended that middle ground in the question of human love, his poetry marked a return to a more “medieval” sensibility. The chapter argues that his most famous image, that of the compass in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” protests, precisely in the name of incarnation, against the neo-Petrarchan and Neoplatonic dehumanization of love.
Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199863020
- eISBN:
- 9780199932900
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199863020.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Srinatha lived on in the south Indian tradition as an exemplary figure, the model of a creative poet. Hundreds of oral (catu) verses attempt to come to terms with the meaning of his life and work. In ...
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Srinatha lived on in the south Indian tradition as an exemplary figure, the model of a creative poet. Hundreds of oral (catu) verses attempt to come to terms with the meaning of his life and work. In the process they flatten out the volatile fusion of eroticism and devotional ecstasy that characterizes Srinatha’s works. We discuss the modes in which the Telugu literary culture of the seventeenth century and later reconceived of this poet and inserted him into a canonical narrative.Less
Srinatha lived on in the south Indian tradition as an exemplary figure, the model of a creative poet. Hundreds of oral (catu) verses attempt to come to terms with the meaning of his life and work. In the process they flatten out the volatile fusion of eroticism and devotional ecstasy that characterizes Srinatha’s works. We discuss the modes in which the Telugu literary culture of the seventeenth century and later reconceived of this poet and inserted him into a canonical narrative.
Ramie Targoff
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226789637
- eISBN:
- 9780226789781
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226789781.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Donne has long been celebrated as one of the great love poets of the English language. But what is it that distinguishes his love poetry, and why do we keep coming back to it? This chapter suggests ...
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Donne has long been celebrated as one of the great love poets of the English language. But what is it that distinguishes his love poetry, and why do we keep coming back to it? This chapter suggests that what distinguishes Donne as a love poet is at once the intensity of the pleasure he conveys in the moment of mutual love, and the ferocity with which he attempts to prolong that moment for as long as he can, knowing full well that its end may be near. In the Songs and Sonnets, he takes up the project of writing valedictory poems, but, in doing so, brings to the surface all of the anxieties that surround the task of bidding farewell and ensuring reunion through the medium of verse. It is in response to the fear of lovers' parting that the Songs and Sonnets are often most vital and alive, just as it is in response to the fear of death—when body and soul must part—that Donne's devotional verse becomes most animated. Indeed, Donne's attitude toward the bond between body and soul extends in crucial ways to his attitude toward the bond between two lovers.Less
Donne has long been celebrated as one of the great love poets of the English language. But what is it that distinguishes his love poetry, and why do we keep coming back to it? This chapter suggests that what distinguishes Donne as a love poet is at once the intensity of the pleasure he conveys in the moment of mutual love, and the ferocity with which he attempts to prolong that moment for as long as he can, knowing full well that its end may be near. In the Songs and Sonnets, he takes up the project of writing valedictory poems, but, in doing so, brings to the surface all of the anxieties that surround the task of bidding farewell and ensuring reunion through the medium of verse. It is in response to the fear of lovers' parting that the Songs and Sonnets are often most vital and alive, just as it is in response to the fear of death—when body and soul must part—that Donne's devotional verse becomes most animated. Indeed, Donne's attitude toward the bond between body and soul extends in crucial ways to his attitude toward the bond between two lovers.
