Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility by C. Stephen Jaeger
2000; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/art.2000.0000
ISSN1934-1539
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
Resumo1?6arthuriana version, this film is strictly science fiction for children. Merlin (Leonard Auclair) first sends Lancelot back fifteen years in time to try to stop the evil wizard Wolvencroft (John Saxon) from kidnapping the squire Arthur. Then Lancelot is propelled into our present to prevent Arthur from pulling Excalibur from the stone in the wrong era, thus giving Wolvencroft ultimate power over time. Among the all-too-few nods to traditional legend is Lancelot's receipt ofa magic ring (though certainly not precisely in the manner described by Chrétien in Le Chevalier de ¿a charrete). Another is Wolvencroft's warning to the hero that, should he succeed in foiling the wizard's plans, Lancelot will ultimately destroy Camelot himself. Marc Singer (of Beastmaster and V fame) stars as Lancelot. Singer is a likable actor, but his agonizingly studied speech inflections and gentle pirouetting with his sword—to say nothing of his incredibly bad hairpiece—are remarkable to behold. BERT OLTON Palmyra, New York c. Stephen jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search ofa Lost Sensibility. (The Middle Ages Series) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999; Pp. xiv, 311. isbn: 0-8122-1691-1. $19.95 (paper)· From the first pages of his study—-presentations of Richard Lionheart 'falling in love with' Philip Augustus and Cordelia responding coldly to her father's demand for a public declaration ofher love for him—to the strong conclusion, Jaeger holds our interest in 'the conception oflove that Cordelia violated'(4) and his consideration of how the West increasingly emphasized the privatized, subjective, and individualized love experience over the public demonstration of 'charismatic love.' Jaeger divides his study into three major sections. Part 1 posits that there is a way of understanding Richard's 'love' of Philip other than through the 'anachronistic concept, homosexuality'(i3). Jaeger recalls that Alcuin wrote passionate letters to male friends while writing harsh laws against sodomy, and notes that the sexualityidentity link is a modern concept that does not serve the situation and experience ofpersonal and public relations ofearlier times. 'Ennobling love' is basically a public experience, an aristocratic behavior meant to increase honor; until the end of the eleventh century its domain was exclusively male. Jaeger returns to classical Antiquity to show the roots ofthe ethical value attached to love in the Middle Ages, pointing to concepts from Aristotle and Plutarch that reappear in Andreas Capellanus's dictum that love 'invests a man with...shining virtues' and reminding us that the word virtue comes from the Latin for 'man,' vir. The Ciceronian equation of male friendship and virtue is imbued with spirituality and does not require physical presence, hence eliminating the erotic. To these models, Christianity added caritas, a communal ideal: love of Christ impels us to love all human beings. Thus in the Middle Ages, two strands are at work: an elitism and a sense of duty to create social harmony. In the early Middle Ages, love found justification in virtue. WTien women entered the picture, so did age-old notions of REVIEWS107 women as occasions of erotic desire, sin. Part 2 investigates virtue as renunciation ofpleasure, from early Christian writings to the concept of distant love, which is itself seen as emerging from Ciceronian ideals and as a first stage ofloving a worthy person. Jaeger has the ability to articulate clearly the problems that arise by looking upon courtly love as a new mode of feeling that erupted in the twelfth century. Focusing on whether the rules ofcourtly love reflect a lived reality and emphasizing the role of irony in courtly literature steers us away, says Jaeger, from the 'decisive question'—'whether exalting love has asocial function' (150). Jaeger contends that the literature embodying the sentiments of courtly love and love service is 'testimony to social forces at work shaping or trying to shape a rough cut warrior society into a civil society' (151). Yet this 'ennobling love' gravitates to the illicit, the language and actions of Eros. Part 3 shows that 'ennobling love' lost its innocence in the twelfth century when love was brought into the realm of fulfillment, whereas before, its rejection of the physical, it was equated with virtue. There are illuminating discussions about...
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