Medieval Love Letters
A Critical Anthology

A carefully chosen selection of medieval love letters, with lucid translations, that explores the interactions between art and actuality.

Myra Stokes (Author), Ad Putter (Author)

9781009398107, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 2024

502 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 3.4 cm, 0.87 kg

'… a poignant and powerful reminder of how many forms of love have always been part of the human experience, not only in the present, but also in the distant past.' Mary C. Flannery, The Times Literary Supplement

In the Middle Ages, educated people communicated their love in verse letters that revealed at once their personal commitments and their commitments to an established form of literary art. Medieval Love Letters reveals the fascinating duality of the medieval love letter as literary art and as life-writing by exploring a wide variety of remarkable texts in English, French, German and Latin. These rich texts are made accessible both linguistically, in new editions and translations, and conceptually, by discussing them in a way intelligible to non-specialists. Edited and translated texts include model letters from instructional manuals and fictional verse and actual letters from clerics and lay people, men and women. A substantial introduction explores the interchange and overlap between fact and literary art with reference to wide range of examples.

Part I. Introduction: The Art of the Love Letter: 1. Art and Actuality: an Overview
2. Occasions
Ways and Means
Male and Female Voices
3. Clerics and Convents
Part II. Fictional and Instructional Models
Text 1. Boncompagno da Signa: Rota Veneris
Text 2. London, British Library, Harley MS 3988
Text 3. The Parliament of Love
Part III. Actual Letters (Drafts, Copies, Missives)
Text 4. the Norfolk Letters: the Abbot to the Nun
Text 5. Oxford, Corpus Christi, MS 154
Text 6. the Armburgh Love-Letters
Text 7. Pierre de Hagenbach and the Canoness at Remiremont – The Council of Remiremont – Conrad Pfettisheim's Account of Pierre de Hagenbach.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]