English Love Poetry: Origins, Connections and A Personal Revelation
This week's lecture on English love poetry was truly eye-opening. Throughout my academic career I have read Shakespeare, Donne, Spencer, Wyatt and of course Dante and Petrarch many times; however, I never made the connections between them or noticed the over-ridding similarities between their love poems and this is because I never considered the history of love poetry. In my experience, the way poetry is taught, particularly in high school, a student is led to believe that Shakespeare was the inventor of great love poetry and the Shakespearean sonnet, when in fact there were many others before him and that Sir Thomas Wyatt's younger friend Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey was in fact the inventor of the English or Shakespearean sonnet (this is a correction, thanks to Professor Kuin). Thanks to Monday's lecture, I am now equipped to demonstrate otherwise, which will be especially helpful when one day I will be the person teaching poetry as a subject.
If one were to track the history of love poetry, they would find it difficult to decipher where exactly it began, because, of course history is not a linear progression, but rather a series of two steps forward and one step back (I apologize for the cliche). So, while some may credit Dante Alighieri as one of the first love poets of the Renaissance, which lasted from the late 13th century to the early 17th century, others would consider the Troubadours of France, beginning in the 11th century to be the major players in the development of love poetry, but lest we forget the influence of Arabic poetry on the Troubadours and who knows what occurred before that, well someone does, but not I. Therefore, I believe it is most accurate to say that the origin of love poetry is indeterminate, but when only considering popular Medieval and Renaissance poets, the Troubadours may be said to be the originators of love poetry and of most influence.
Now that I have established a brief outline of the history of love poetry or at least the perimeters in which I am working from, I'd like to outline the connections I have made on this topic based on Monday's lecture. The Troubadours wrote and sang about courtly love, which is "a system of attitudes, myths, beliefs and rules which governed the real and imagined behavior of knights and their ladies as they pursued one another in a flirting and adulterous relationship which was supposed to flatter the lady and elevate, ennoble, and energize the knight" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Courtly_love). This type of regulated love sets the groundwork for writing about the type of love that is more than just that indescribable emotion we all hope to feel at some point in our lives, but is rather a culturally constructed sort of love. Thus, the authors I mentioned earlier in this post wrote of loving an unattainable person, usually a woman, similar to the Troubadours and it is the irritation, as Professor Kuin described it, of the inaccessibility that inspires the love poem. Essentially, the work of someone like Shakespeare did not grow out of the feelings of being in love, but rather from a desperate longing for those feelings for someone who cannot reciprocate. It is this point that I find so remarkable, because I never read Shakespeare (or the other authors) that way, I never felt that desperation, I suppose I was being idealistic and naive, maybe I was even being romantic (as much as I dread to use such a 'kitsch' word as my group member, Meg, calls it). Anyhow, for better or worse, my veil was removed Monday and now I see it all.
Janice
If one were to track the history of love poetry, they would find it difficult to decipher where exactly it began, because, of course history is not a linear progression, but rather a series of two steps forward and one step back (I apologize for the cliche). So, while some may credit Dante Alighieri as one of the first love poets of the Renaissance, which lasted from the late 13th century to the early 17th century, others would consider the Troubadours of France, beginning in the 11th century to be the major players in the development of love poetry, but lest we forget the influence of Arabic poetry on the Troubadours and who knows what occurred before that, well someone does, but not I. Therefore, I believe it is most accurate to say that the origin of love poetry is indeterminate, but when only considering popular Medieval and Renaissance poets, the Troubadours may be said to be the originators of love poetry and of most influence.
Now that I have established a brief outline of the history of love poetry or at least the perimeters in which I am working from, I'd like to outline the connections I have made on this topic based on Monday's lecture. The Troubadours wrote and sang about courtly love, which is "a system of attitudes, myths, beliefs and rules which governed the real and imagined behavior of knights and their ladies as they pursued one another in a flirting and adulterous relationship which was supposed to flatter the lady and elevate, ennoble, and energize the knight" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Courtly_love). This type of regulated love sets the groundwork for writing about the type of love that is more than just that indescribable emotion we all hope to feel at some point in our lives, but is rather a culturally constructed sort of love. Thus, the authors I mentioned earlier in this post wrote of loving an unattainable person, usually a woman, similar to the Troubadours and it is the irritation, as Professor Kuin described it, of the inaccessibility that inspires the love poem. Essentially, the work of someone like Shakespeare did not grow out of the feelings of being in love, but rather from a desperate longing for those feelings for someone who cannot reciprocate. It is this point that I find so remarkable, because I never read Shakespeare (or the other authors) that way, I never felt that desperation, I suppose I was being idealistic and naive, maybe I was even being romantic (as much as I dread to use such a 'kitsch' word as my group member, Meg, calls it). Anyhow, for better or worse, my veil was removed Monday and now I see it all.
Janice