Decoding courtly love (^12th-13th centuries)

Abstract

Written in the last quarter of the ^twelfth century, André le Chapelain'sDe amore was long considered the code of courtly love. Questioning the very notion of a love code to characterize a literary movement and a lifestyle, we undertake to decipher its interpretation, paying attention to the history of its transmission until the end of the ^13th century, but also to that of the equivocal readings and censures its dialogism and irony provoke. In this way, we contribute to decoding it, in the sense that its normative value is called into question, in favor of a more social reading of its political functioning, between the school and the court, the Church and the king, but also between the "  mouvance " of Troyes (where Chrétien de Troyes is perhaps no more than a " code name ") and the Capetian capital.

Contents

• At the school of love : literary movements and lifestyles
• A love code is not " a text to be interpreted, but a language for conceiving relationships and a range for actions " (Gadi Algazi and Rina Drory, "  L'amour à la cour des Abbassides. Un code de compétence sociale ", Annales, HSS, 2000)
• Is André le Chapelain's De amore a Traité de l'amour courtois (ed. and trans. Claude Buridant, Paris, 1994) ?
• Its manuscript tradition, or how a work eventually reaches its " potential signification " (Alfred Karnein, " La réception du De Amore d'André Le Chapelain au ^XIIIe siècle ", Romania, 1981)
• From Albertano da Brescia's De amore dei to the Roman de la Rose : a theological-moral aim
• De l'amour (c. 1180 and 1822) :" Sickness of thought " and Stendhalian crystallization
• A principle for the organization of political society ?(Georges Duby, Les Trois Ordres ou l'imaginaire du féodalisme, Paris, 1978)
• La cour royale comme lieu de confrontation des langages de l'amour (John Baldwin, Les Langages de l'amour au temps de Philippe Auguste, Paris, 1997)
• Les voix du De amore :determinatio magistrale et dialogisme (Corinne Denoyelle, " Les dialogues amoureux dans le Tractatus de Amore : l'autorité à l'épreuve de la dialectique, entre disputatio et fiction paradigmatique ", in Le dialogue ou les enjeux d'un choix d'écriture, Rennes, 2006)
• Vingt-et-un jugements, cinq princesses et "  l'assemblée des dames de Gascogne "
• Andreas Cappelanus and his addressee Gautier, " one of those young wolves of the Capetian court, well placed, and a good Latinist " (Pascale Bourgain, " Aliénor d'Aquitaine et Marie de Champagne mises en cause par André le Chapelain ", Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 1986)
• Better to be lovers than " conjugués ", claims Marie de Champagne
• The date 1174 as a springboard for intertextuality : towards Le Chevalier à la charrette
• Chrétien de Troyes and "  theelusive shadow of the author " (Estelle Doudet, Chrétien de Troyes, Paris, 2009)
• How many are there ? Chrétien de Troyes, code name (Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken, Thinking through Chrétien de Troyes, Woodbridge, 2011)
• Chrétien ? De Troyes ? Talmudic capital and "  mouvance " of literature (Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, Paris, 1979)
• " Ce conte Crestiens li Gois " (Philomena, c. 734) : the hypothesis of a Jewish convert (Peter Haidu, The Philomena of Chrétien the Jew: The Semiotics of Evil, ed. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Cambridge, 2020)
• Quand un clerc veut engigner les femmes " en les entortillant de paroles " (Georges Duby, Dames du ^XIIe siècle, t.3, Eve et les prêtres, Paris, 1996)
• Beyond renunciation of the flesh: a realistic reconsideration of ecclesiastical sexuality
• Still searching for the code : is irony the hidden rule ?(Don A. Monson, " Andreas Capellanus and the Problem of Irony ", Speculum, 1988)
• " Perhaps, in the end, we are projecting onto André's bizarre text our modern conceptions of medieval literature, once considered purely naive, today as particularly devious " (Jean-Yves Tilliette, " Amor est passio innata ex visione procedens ". Amour et vision dans le Tractatus amoris d'André le Chapelain, Micrologus, 1998)
• Pulsate et aperietur vobis (Matt, 7, 7) : double entente and dirty-joke school (Betsy Bowden, " The Art of Courtly Copulation ", Medievalia et Humanistica, 1979)
• Upper and lower parts : love " below the belt "
• " Too serious to be funny, too funny to be moral and, in the end, too moral to be serious ", De amore can't just be a literary hoax
• Why must clerics read Ovid and André le Chapelain and be instructed in the art of love ?
• Ad cautelam, " As a warning " (John Baldwin, "  L'ars amatoria au ^XIIe siècle en France : Ovide, Abélard, André le Chapelain et Pierre le Chantre ", in Mélanges Georges Duby, Paris, 1992)
• From double understanding to double truth ? The condemnation of 1277
• La culture des goliards : s'éprouver comme intellectuels par la grivoiserie et le chahut (Jacques Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen Âge, Paris, 1957)
• Ibi statur, un " programme existentiel " (Luca Bianchi, Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l'Université de Paris - ^XIIIe-XIVe siècles , Paris, 1999)
• Plurality of the senses, excitation of the senses : the erotics of knowledge
• An epilogue in reverse chronology : Heloise, Abelard and the unborn child
• When " the metaphor painfully takes flesh " : correspondence as epistolary novel of the passage from carnal to spiritual love (Jacques Dalarun, " Nouveaux aperçus sur Abélard, Héloïse et le Paraclet ", Francia, 32, 2005)
• At the municipal library of Troyes, two corps écrits (Lettres des deux amants, attribuées à Héloïse et Abélard, ed. Sylvain Piron, Paris, 2005 and Constant Mews, La Voix d'Héloïse : un dialogue de deux amants, Fribourg, 2005)
• Suo specialiter, sua singulariter :" et Héloïse remporter la victoire dans cette escarmouche d'adresses " (Élisabeth Lalou, " 'Quid amor sit'  ", Critique, 2007)