Courtly Love: Dante

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Courtly Love Dante Petrarch

• CNE/ENG 120
• 11/8/04

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La Vita Nuova

• Author Dante Alighieri
• Culture Italian
• Time 1265-1321 CE
• Genre lyric poetry
• Name to know Beatrice
• Theme erotic love as road to salvation

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Central Elements of Courtly Love

• We see these developed from the Troubadours
• This love is an overwhelming emotion that
  promises ecstatic bliss but also causes painful
  yearning
• The beloved is the embodiment of all virtue but
  remains cool distant, even unaware of the
  lovers suffering
• Love is an ennobling emotion it can be fully
  experienced only by nobles it causes them to
  behave in selfless and exalted ways.

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Courtly Love Poems

• Were composed and circulated at court. Like the
  Japanese court of Sei Shonagon, aristocrats vied
  with each other in composing music and love
  poetry.
• Love lyric spread throughout Europe, to Sicily,
  Italy, France, Germany, and England.
• In Sicily Italy there was a great interest in
  verbal and metrical skill in the way in which
  intense love could lead to religious truth.

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Dante il dolce stil nuovo

• The great Italian poets created (in the late 13th
  c.) the sweet new style in which poetic
  virtuosity expressed the intensity and
  authenticity of the lovers feelings.
• The Beloved Lady opened up her admirer to a love
  that was genuinely religious.
• Dante wrote, the lady seems to be a creature
  come from Heaven to earth, to manifest a miracle.

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Imagery of the Incarnation

• Dante appropriates the language and imagery of
  the incarnation to represent the Christ-like
  effect of Beatrice on him.
• He wants to create a poetic language that could
  describe the transformative effects of love.
• The Vita Nuova is autobiographical to a point,
  but limits Dantes life to ladies and love in a
  pastoral setting.

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Important Events of Dantes Life

• He fell in love with Beatrice at first sight,
  when he was 9 and she was 8. From then love
  governed his soul.
• Death of Beatrice in 1290
• Exile from Florence in 1302
• Marriage to Gemma Donati in 1285 had four
  children with her.

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The Sound of Dantes Poetry (To Every Captive
Soul)

• Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo
• Meo core in mano, e ne le braccia avea
• Madonna involta in un drappo dormendo.
• Poi la svegliava, e desto core ardendo
• Lei paventosa umilmente pascea.
• Appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.

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Last Stanza of To Every Captive Soul

• Joyous, Love seemed to me, holding my heart
• Within his hand, and in his arms he had
• My Lady, loosely wrapped in folds, asleep.
• He woke her then, and gently fed to her
• The burning heart she ate it, terrified.
• And then I saw him disappear in tears.

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Beatrices Power The Third Stanza of Ladies Who
Have

• My lady is desired in highest Heaven.
• Now let me tell you something of her power.
• A lady who aspires to graciousness
• Should seek her company, for where she goes Love
  drives a killing frost into vile hearts
• That freezes and destroys what they are thinking
  
• Should such a one insist on looking at her,
• He is changed to something noble or he dies.
• And if she finds one worthy to behold her, that
  man will feel her power for salvation. . .
  Whoever speaks with her shall speak with Him.

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Rime Sparse (Scattered Rhymes)

• Author Francis Petrarch
• Culture Italian
• Time 1304-1374 CE
• Genre Lyric poetry
• Name to Know Laura
• Themes nature and power of erotic love

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Petrarch

• Born in Arezzo in 1304, grew up in Avignon (the
  Babylonian Exile of the Papacy).
• Went to law school, but chose to pursue classics
  instead - devoted himself to the recovery of
  classical learning (he was ahead of his time). He
  is a precursor to the Renaissance and Humanism.
  His lyric poems in vernacular Italian are his
  greatest contribution to this.
• He served as a diplomat around Europe.

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Laura

• His lyric poems were dedicated to his frustrated
  desire for an elusive woman named Laura. His art,
  his experience of erotic love, and his sense of
  his own fragmented, fluid, and changing self set
  the standard for lyric expression of the
  subjective and erotic experience of the
  Renaissance.

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Life

• Although he was of a minor religious order, he
  sired two children.
• Crowned poet-laureate of Rome.
• Retired in 1370 to an area near Padua, lived with
  his daughter Francesca.
• Died on 7/18/1374, with his head resting on an
  open volume of his beloved Vergil.
• His most famous work Rime Sparse, 366
  songs/sonnets of extraordinary technical
  virtuosity and variety. The poet studies himself,
  his thoughts, life, experience.

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Petrarchs Note on Lauras Life

• On the flyleaf of his copy of Vergil, he wrote
  Laura, illustrious through her virtues, and long
  famed through my verses, first appeared to my
  eyes in my youth, in the church of St. Clare in
  Avignon, at matins and in the same city, also on
  the 6th of April, at the same first hour, but in
  the year 1348, the light of her life was
  withdrawn from the light of day, while I, as it
  chanced, was in Verona, unaware of my fate. . .
  Her chaste and lovely form was laid to rest at
  vesper time . . . I am persuaded that her soul
  has returned to the heaven from which it came . .
  .

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Lauras Role

• Laura played a powerful role in Petrarchs
  personal struggles between spiritual aspirations
  and earthly attachments.
• She has an ambiguous position between divine
  guide and earthly temptress. In contrast to
  Dantes Beatrice, it is never clear if Laura will
  help or hinder Petrarch from achieving earthly
  paradise. I see the better, but choose the
  worse.

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St. Augustines Role

• St. Augustine is a haunting moral presence in the
  collection. Petrarch defends his adoration of
  Laura to an understanding yet disapproving
  Augustine.
• His love of her beauty is idolatrous, not
  realistic. He never, in his poetry, transcends
  his attachment to Laura.

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Petrarchs Poems

• 1 addresses his readers, speaks of his love for
  Laura and the power of this emotion. His love for
  her became the talk of the town but in the end,
  he knows that worldly joys are just a fleeting
  dream. compare w/Abelard
• 3 recounts his first meeting with Laura.
  Imagery her lovely eyes bound him. His eyes are
  now the halls doors of tears.

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Petrarchs Poems

• 16 The speaker, a broken old man, comes to Rome,
  pursuing his desire to look upon Laura, whom he
  hopes to see again in Heaven.
• 35 Poet burns within, bereft of joy, victim of
  the knowing glances of mankind. He cant escape
  his feelings. nature imagery
• 52 a racy poem. Lauras body pleases him more
  than the goddess Diana/Artemis. Imagery the
  chill of love makes me tremble

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Petrarchs Poems

• 90 This is a powerful poem about Lauras
  physical attributes and their effect on him.
• 126 Laura in nature. Her presence makes the poet
  feel as if he is already in Heaven.
• 175 The poet grows older but still loves Laura -
  he will do so forever. Imagery love is a wound
  in the heart
• 267 a poem responding to Lauras death from the
  plague in 1348.

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Petrarchs Poems

• 277 A poem of sorrow
• 291 Dawn makes him think of Laura (her
  complexion, her hair). By using classical
  references, he speaks of love seizing him.
• 311 A poem of sorrow. The poet blames himself
  for thinking Death could not rule such a
  goddess! He learns that nothing here can please
  and also last.