Medieval Academy of America

The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship by Roger Boase Review by: H. A. Kelly Speculum, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 338-342 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2854981 . Accessed: 27/02/2012 16:09
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum.

http://www.jstor.org

338

Reviews

"Deudas y pagos del Maestre de Santiago D. Pelay Perez Correa" is an extension of the previous monograph. There we learned that this particular maestre, ruler of the order from 1248 to 1275, had difficulties in paying his debts to Italian bankers. In this article we learn that he did not discriminate, as he procrastinated in his payments to men, women, Jews, Frenchmen, Castilians, and Catalans. Continuing with Pelay Perez Correa, his next article, "Establecimientos de la Orden de Santiago en el siglo XIII," stresses the importance of the rules and ordinances passed by the general chapter of the order in the thirteenth century. In "La Orden de Santiago en Asturias," he inventories the Order's property in that area and also attempts to identify individual members in charge. Although the author includes useful tables, maps, and documents, which provide excellent information on prices, wages, population, and income, the data is not fully exploited. The last article "La Orden de Santiago en Francia," follows the same line as the previous piece. Benito Ruano traces the presence of Santiago in France from the first privilege granted by Philip II in 1183 to the sixteenth century, what places the order held, and some of the members in charge. Following F. Gutton, La Chevaleriemilitaire en Espagne: L'Ordrede Santiago (Paris, 1972), Benito Ruano points to the relationship between the locations controlled by the Order and the road to Compostella. It is, perhaps, confusing to suggest that the property held by the order north of the Pyreenes was in France. Although most of their possessions were located in what today is France or in what in the Middle Ages was under theoretical or actual suzerainty of the French crown, the Normandy of Henry II or the Gascony of Edward III were hardly French. In this last article as in the previous selections, Benito Ruano's main contributions reside in his emphasis on the international character of the order, the identification of individual members, and the always useful edition and publication of most of the relevant documents. This is a book of interest for students of the Military Order of Santiago, written with love by a scholar who often refers to his topic as "our order."
TEOFII.O F. Ruiz

Brooklyn College, CUNY

ROGER BOASE, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European

Scholarship. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977. Pp. xii, 171; 8 plates. $13.50. EVERYONE has heard of courtly love, and everyone knows that it appears quite suddenly at the end of the nineteenth century in France. The term amour courtoiswas
hit upon by Gaston Paris to characterize the kind of love first found in Chretien's

Lancelot. After Paris's time, the phrase came to be widely used to refer to medieval "romantic" love in general, and in particular to the conventions and practices allegedly discernible in early troubadour poetry. Roger Boase approves of and defends this usage in the book under review. His first and longest chapter (pp. 5-61) is a "Chronological Survey of Courtly Love Scholarship," extending basically from the sixteenth century through the 1960s, and including American works, despite the book's subtitle. In his second chapter, "Theories on the Origin of Courtly Love" (pp. 62-99), he proceeds thematically rather than chronologically, and lists characteristics of seven categories of explanations: Hispano-Arabic, Chivalric-Matriarchal, Crypto-Cathar, Neoplatonic, Bernardine-

Reviews

339

Marianist, Spring Folk Ritual, and Feudal-Sociological. He analyzes several aspects or variants of each theory, and points out strengths and weaknesses. The third chapter, "Theories on the Meaning of Courtly Love" (pp. 100-116), is constructed similarly; here he deals with five categories, namely, Collective Fantasy, Play Phenomenon, Courtly Experience, Stylistic Convention, and Critical Fallacy. There follow a conclusion and two appendixes concerning the Arabic theory of origins. The selected bibliography is ten pages longer than chapter three, and lists a great many works not dealt with in the text. It is as a history of literary criticism that the book is most successful, especially in illustrating changing attitudes towards the troubadours and their poetry. I found many of the scholars Boase deals with unfamiliar, and his findings are often surprising. He shows, for instance, that the theory of the Spanish Muslim origins of the Provencal poetic traditions was set forth as early as the sixteenth century. Variations of the theory were broached in later times, until it went into eclipse in the latter part of the nineteenth century, only to be revived in the second decade of the twentieth. Again, he finds that Gabriele Rossetti in 1832 was the first to suggest a Catharist origin for some of the medieval notions of love. But because Boase gives the name of Courtly Love to all of the various "codes" or theories of love that he discusses, he produces ambiguities that constitute a serious flaw in the work. He does not systematically summarize the studies that he deals with: he does not always give us the "content" or scope of the love conventions or doctrines under discussion, or state the literary works (which poems of which poets) or the geographical regions or particular times that each scholar primarily bases his theory upon. The result is that Boase often gives the impression of agreement on basic assumptions where in fact no such agreement exists. He tells us, for instance, that Jean Frappier in Romania 1972 clearly demonstrates that "Courtly Love is not an imaginary construct which critics have superimposed on medieval literature" (p. 112); but he does not tell us that Frappier discerns several kinds of love in twelfth-century French literature, and that he dislikes the term amour courtois. At the end of his study, Boase admits that "theories of origin are based on preconceptions about the meaning of Courtly Love, yet the meaning of the term has never been satisfactorily defined" (p. 123). Why then have the chapter on origins before the chapter on meaning? And why discuss theories of what the "phenomenon" means without delimiting the meaning of the term in each case? He acknowledges on the first page that we are not dealing with an "it" but rather with "lots of its": "Courtly Love has been subjected to a bewildering variety of uses and definitions." But he seems to think that there is a common denominator in all of them, and he justifies the continued use of the term because "medieval love poets consciously wrote within a literary tradition, inspired by a particular ideal of 'true love' which motivated their conduct," because critics have studied "this literary and social phenomenon" well before the time of Gaston Paris, and because most critics agree that "modern European poetry begins in twelfth-century Provence, and that the concept of love implicit in troubadour poetry is utterly different from that which was expressed by the poets of ancient Rome." It is clear that Boase agrees with this majority vote of the critics, and that he is usually thinking primarily of early Provencal poetry (in globo), though he also speaks of "the subsequent development of Courtly Love" (p. 126), and can use fifteenth-century sources to "prove that Courtly Love was not invented by Gaston Paris" (pp. 113-114). Boase's treatment of Gaston Paris provides a good example of how he can be misled by his own presuppositions about what is meant by Courtly Love. After

340

Reviews

summarizing the four aspects of amour courtois listed by Paris in his 1883 Romania article, he says that Paris finds this love first appearing in northern French literature in Chretien's Lancelot (p. 24). By specifying northern France, Boase indicates his belief that Paris considered Provencal poetry to be included in the same category (this supposition is shared by many other critics, including Frappier). But in fact Paris held that the love manifested in the poetry of the south of France was only one of the contributing factors to amour courtois; troubadour love conventions differed from amour courtoisprimarily in not being codified and in not emphasizing service through physical prowess. The codification, Paris says, was inspired by Ovid, and the "proof of valor" aspect of amour courtois derived principally from the knightly etiquette or "galanterie chevaleresque" that first appeared in the English court of Henry I. All of these elements, in Paris's view, were fused under the influence of Marie de Champagne and her circle. (Boase, by the way, reports John Benton's rejection "of the theory that the court of Champagne acted as a point of literary interchange between the north and south of France" without passing judgment on it [p. 47], but later [p. 66] he seems to accept Marie's authorship of the letter of 1 May 1174 cited by Andrew the Chaplain.) One of the features that Paris found in the love celebrated by the troubadours is that it was illicit, a point that he repeats at the end of his review of Alfred Jeanroy's Les origines de la poesie lyriqueen France au moyenage (1889) in the Journal des savants for 1891 and 1892: "La poesie lyrique courtoise ne c&elbrejamais l'amour qu'en dehors du mariage ou plut6t contre le mariage." But in speaking here of poesie courtoiseParis has not advanced to the point of identifying troubadour love with the amour courtoiset chevaleresqueof the Lancelot, as one might suppose from Boase's summary on p. 87: "Courtly Love was extraconjugal, and generally adulterous (Paris 1891-92)"; rather Paris is simply distinguishing aristocratic court poetry from the popular May Day songs which (he thinks) inspired it. The "morality" of medieval love is one of the most widely discussed and controversial aspects of courtly-love theories, but Boase is unaccountably vague and noncommittal on this subject. He says that the attractiveness of the Catharist theory of origins is considerably diminished "if, as many critics now agree, Courtly Love was not essentially extraconjugal" (p. 80), but he does not name the critics or tell us their arguments. It seems that the first opposition to Paris's antimatrimonial assessment of the lyrics came in Joseph Bedier's review of Jeanroy in the Revue des deux mondes for May 1896 (Boase's date of 1892 on p. 25 is a misprint). Boase uses some of his arguments (though without identifying them as Bedier's) to show that "the antimatrimonial character of May Day has little bearing on Courtly Love"; and he admits that "it was by no means always the case" that the poet was addressing a married woman (p. 89). But Boase clearly believes that it was generally the case that she was married or at least unmarriageable (because of her high rank), and he takes no notice of Bedier's fundamental objection: "Les chansons courtoises sont generalement assez vagues pour se preter a toutes les varietes de situation qu'offre in effet la vie, amour coupable ou non, heureux ou contrarie, pour un femme libre ou engagee en d'autres liens" (p. 171, n. 1). Boase favors a feudal-sociological theory of origins that presupposes "a need for conventions of love outside marriage" (p. 125). He also assumes the prevalence of "a patron-client relationship" between the lady and her lover. However, William D. Paden, "The Troubadour's Lady: Her Marital Status and Social Rank," Studies in Philology 72 (1975), 28-50, warns us against being misled by the metaphorof feudal subservience. Paden and his seminarists find that in only a comparatively few cases

Reviews

341

(6% of the 500 texts studied) is the poet's lady literally portrayed as enjoying high rank; and there are even fewer cases (3%) in which adulterous love is clearly at issue and taken seriously. Furthermore, as Douglas Kelly has pointed out in SPECULUM 52 947, the typical attributes of lover and beloved seem to have been sexually (1977), interchangeable, and it is often impossible to tell whether a man or woman is speaking in a given poem. Boase also favors the Hispano-Arabic theory of origins, which he finds to be complementary to the feudal-sociological analysis. But though he presents a quite plausible case for interaction between Christians and Muslims on the level of the composers and performers of songs (pp. 69 and 72), the case that he makes for indebtedness to Arabic traditions for specific themes or combinations of themes is unconvincing; and I am moved to agree with the judgment of Samuel Stern which Boase cites: "There is reason to doubt whether even a single element in the poetry of the troubadours is due to the influence of Arabic poetry" (p. 41). In arguing his case, Boase does not allow for the possibility of other explanations. One of the ideas which he thinks the Arabs originated is the affinity between love and hate, and his first example is an excerpt that he found in one of Peter Dronke's books from Richard of St. Victor's Tractatus de quattuor gradibus violentae caritatis (p. 134). But a look at the treatise itself and at Richard's other works on love will reveal that he was almost totally dependent on biblical sources, especially the passionate love lyrics of the Song of Songs. When we think of Catullus's "Odi et amo" and Ovid's "Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo" (Amores3.11.35), we can also think of the possibility of classical influence, or even suspect that such feelings come naturally to the human spirit (whether "normal" or neurotic). The same is true of other "paradoxical virtues" of love. (I should note that the passages that Boase gathers on pp. 137-139 are examples not of paradoxes or oxymora, but of love's power to convert a person from vice to virtue.) Boase sometimes adduces influences under the Hispano-Arabic category that in fact bypass the Spanish or even the Arabic world. For instance, the Greco-Arabic doctrine of the love-malady turns out to be Arabo-Italic in the case of Constantine Africanus (pp. 68, 72), or simply Greco-Latin in the case of Oribasius (p. 132). Boase does not explain how he knows that medieval Byzantium "inherited the lyrical tradition of the Arabs" (p. 108). The nature of Boase's enterprise has made him largely dependent on secondary sources, and he is therefore usually better when summarizing than when judging, for many of the questions he wishes to answer require a greater familiarity with primary sources than he has. He is particularly weak on the subject of devotion to the Virgin Mary. He concludes from St. Bernard's opposition to the feast of the Immaculate Conception, as cited by Denis de Rougemont, that "St. Bernard himself did not approve of the new cult of Mary" (p. 84). This of the "great doctor of Mary"! He establishes the newness of the cult, which reached its height "only after 1230" (p. 85, citing Jeanroy), by pointing out that "the Virgin Mary occupied a secondary position in early Christianity," for "it was only in the Gnostic Ophite sects that the Virgin Mary was actually worshipped as a goddess" (p. 98, n. 59, quoting E. O. James). Are we to conclude that she was more generally worshipped as a goddess in later times? He points to her importance in orthodox circles by referring to the ecumenical councils of 325 and 431 (pp. 98-99). If this is not early enough to qualify as "early Christianity," it is surely early enough to give Marian devotion plenty of time to develop. We can in fact find evidence of a romanticized cult, based largely on the Song of Songs, in the Office of the Assumption in the earliest extant "Roman"

342

Reviews

antiphonary, that of ninth-century Compiegne. When Boase cites H. P. J. M. Ahsmann, Le Culte de la sainte Vierge et la litterature franpaise profane du moyen age (ca. 1929), p. 110, as his authority for saying that "scarcely any poetry was dedicated to the Virgin Mary before 1150" (p. 85), he is simply mistaken. What Ahsmann is talking about (on p. 111, not 110) is vernacular Provencal poetry; and he goes on in the next sentence to say that sometimes these early troubadour poets borrowed epithets from ancient Marian hymns to apply to their ladies. Boase classifies under the rubric of Critical Fallacy those scholars who object to the various theories treated elsewhere in his book. But none of them, I think, would wish to hold that there was nothing novel or unique about troubadour love poetry. The same, of course, can be said about any body of poetry written at any time, not simply because every poem and every poet is unique, but also because every place and every age is subject to peculiar influences. Everyone must admit that there was a great emphasis upon love between the sexes among the Provencal poets. But the components and "specific differences" of their themes and conventions will have to be spelled out with greater care than has usually been done in the past. Peter Dronke, whom Boase places in a separate category (Courtly Experience) for stressing the similarities between medieval fine amor and the love conventions of other times and places, has recently pointed to the dissimilarities that exist not only among different troubadours but also among the different poems of a single troubadour. He concludes: "I believe that the more closely one studies any group of poetrically gifted troubadours (there were of course dull ones, too), the more their artistic and human individuality will emerge, and phrases such as 'the courtly code' will be seen as a scholars' construct based not on the lyrics, but rather on some theoretical passages in romances and didactic verse, and most of all perhaps on the jesting Latin treatise of Andreas Capellanus (which belongs to another tradition entirely). This construct, by suggesting that troubadours shared a uniform ethic, obscures the individual lyrics far more than it illuminates them" (Times Literary Supplement, 12 September 1975, p. 1023). But if one cannot agree with Boase that theje ne sais quoi of Courtly Love was "a comprehensive cultural phenomenon: a literary movement, an ideology, an ethical system, a style of life," and so on (pp. 129-130), one need not despair completely. Though most lyrics can fit any of a number of narrative scenarios or ethical viewpoints and therefore cannot be definitively placed in a grand system, we may be able to arrive at some "lower-case generalities," and speak, for instance, of prevalent moods of a given group of poets or speakers in certain situations reflecting particular circumstances of their society. Taken together, such conclusions may serve to characterize not only the variety but also the singularity of Provencal love poetry as a whole, and of the love poetry of other generations and cultures. I am sorry to have stressed so many negative features of Boase's study. In many ways he has performed a difficult task well, and his book should be read (with caution) by everyone interested in the subject. He does not claim to have come to any definitive conclusions, and he recommends that dissenting readers form their own judgments. He frequently decides that more research is needed, and this is a conclusion to which no one can take exception.
H. A. KELLY

University of California, Los Angeles