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The art of courtly love is difficult to pinpoint because there are many facets that extend into different areas. In the Pre-Raphaelite and Medieval periods, love was more formulated with rules, moral standards, and codes. Courtly love is often seen as the "love" practiced by kings, queens, and other nobility because of the mystique that surrounds legendary stories like Lancelot and Guinevere. Courtly love encompasses spiritual awakening, lust, passion, adultery, and religion; therefore, the art of courtly love intrigues as well as interests its readers. Many critics have studied the effects of courtly love in literature and have come to the conclusion that courtly love was not only linked to Christianity, but that courtly love was also linked with other religions and philosophies. The link between Christianity and courtly love is the largest debate between critics and scholars within this particular genre. Women have also played a part in understanding courtly love because of their complex role within the storylines of the literary poems. Women were often seen as the stronger of the sexes; however, they were viewed as objects instead of people. In courtly love, women were often the downfall of men because of their idle ways and abilities to deceive men. Women are important for the understanding of the rules and courtships between men and women during this period. Tennyson and Morris had the most influential courtly love literature during the Pre-Raphaelite period. Their contributions to the tale of the Arthurian Legend are inherent to the understanding of this genre of courtly love. With Idylls of the King, Tennyson brought a resurgence of interest in the Arthurian Legend. His Idylls are various stories about the trials and tribulations of Arthur's life and others in Camelot. Morris followed the brilliance of Tennyson's Idylls with The Defense of Guinevere, which is a poem solely based on Guinevere's perspective and point of view. These two authors sought to create a myth around the Arthurian Legend with great vigor and their own poetic style. There has been a plethora of discussion on the topic of courtly love; however, there has not a been a common agreement on its origins. This study shows how courtly love relates to literature during the Pre-Raphaelite period, most especially in the Arthurian Legend.

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Velmi utěšená a kratochvílná historie o krásné panně Mageloně, dceři krále z Neapolis, a o jednom rytíři jménem Petrovi, znamenitého hraběte z Provincí synu (The Delightful and Entertaining Story of the Beautiful Young Maiden Maguelone, Daughter of the King of Naples, and of a certain Knight called Peter, the Son of the Distinguished Count of Provence) printed anonymously in Olomouc in 1780, is one of those works into which literary science has hitherto scarcely ever inquired. It is nevertheless a text with a very long and complex genesis. We can follow its development from a medieval French tale of love, via a German adaptation to an early modern Czech popular prose romance. In the story of Maguelone, close attention is paid, as the very title suggests, to the main heroine, which is also a theme which in research into older Czech literature has been hitherto rather neglected. In the present thesis, we focus therefore on the analysis of this character. In particular, we try to show how the way she is portrayed is significantly influenced by the medieval conception of courtly literature, despite the fact that courtly epic literature is not otherwise particularly well documented in literature written in Czech and left no particularly rich tradition behind it. Key words: courtly love, courtly literature,...

Purpose of my thesis is create a precise register of inversion in chante-fable from XIIIth century: Aucassin et Nicolette. Main point of view is connected with a converse of woman and man part. This noticeable destabilization brings an inversion of further rules defined by literary discourse of medieval literature, above all by courtly culture. The first part included a basic definitions of misogyny, courtly love, chivarly and carnival principle. Following analysis of Aucassin et Nicolette indicates medieval need to show aberrations from social order and tries to find way to cure that "illness" of age.

(in English): Intimacy and solitude in Chrétien de Troyes' works and in the Czech courtly romance The thesis studies some literary images of interiority, profound emotions and thougts, solitude and the need for privacy as these are depicted in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and in the works of his continuators (namely those connected with the Tristan romances). They are interpreted as an expression of the medieval poets' effort to influence their public, to cultivate and to present some interesting subjects and important questions in the guise of a fictional story. There are striking descriptions of the unbalance between solitude and social duties, positive or negative evaluation of human solitude (always depending on the narrator's intention), or symbolical objects from the intimate sphere used as manifest means of political representation. Martin Šorm

L‘étude de notre corpus porte sur les chansons d‘amour et d‘ami gallaïco-portugaises datées de la fin du XIIème jusqu‘au milieu du XIVème siècle. La problématique consiste à déterminer quelle dialectique entretiennent le troubadour et la figure féminine à travers ces deux genres lyriques dans le cadre de l‘amour et de l‘érotisme. Leur rapport amoureux repose sur une dialectique soit platonicienne, soit hégélienne, en fonction du genre lyrique, de la thématique de l‘amour et de l‘érotisme, de leur appartenance sociale, de la référence aux histoires amoureuses réelles et imaginaires de l‘époque, mais aussi de la matière, de la forme, de l‘origine et de la source d‘influence de la chanson. Le regard porté sur la femme dans la société médiévale ibérique a subi l‘influence d‘un double discours entretenu par les Penseurs de l‘Église qui a consisté, d‘une part à inférioriser la femme en la rendant responsable du péché originel, et d‘autre part à lui associer une image maternelle et mariale tout à la fois. Face à cette vision, le troubadour entend concevoir une nouvelle image féminine dans ses compositions lyriques, selon deux modèles de représentation. D‘abord, il décrit une figure féminine abstraite et inaccessible dans un espace et un temps sacrés à travers une peinture érotique de l‘amour. Cette figure s‘apparente à celle de la Dame de la cour, de la comtesse de Tripoli ou de la Vierge Marie. Mais aussi, proche de lui, il la met en scène dans des récits amoureux conformes au monde profane et à la réalité historique et sociale, en faisant une jeune femme célibataire ou mariée, appartenant soit à la noblesse, à la bourgeoisie, ou à la paysannerie. / The study of our corpus is about the gallaïco-portuguese songs of love and friend dated from the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century. The problem is to determine what dialectic maintain the troubadour and the feminine face through the two lyric genres in the context of love and eroticism. Their loving relationship is based on a dialectic either Platonic or Hegelian, depending on the lyric genre, the theme of love and eroticism, their social class, the reference to real and imaginary loving stories of the period, but also of the material, the shape, the origin and the source of influence of the song. The glance carried towards the woman in the iberian medieval society was under the influence of a double speech maintained by the Thinkers of the Church which consisted, on one hand to minimize the importance of woman in making responsible original sin and on the other hand to associate her a maternal image and Marian quite at the same time. In front of this vision, the troubadour intends to design a new image of woman in his lyrical compositions, according to two models of representation. At first, he describes an abstract and inaccessible feminine face in a space and sacred time through an erotic paint in the love. This face is similar to that of the Lady of the court, the countess of Tripoli or the Virgin Mary. But also, near him, he depicts her in loving narratives corresponding to the profane world and to the historic and social reality, as a young woman married or single, belonging either to the nobility, the middle-class, or the peasantry.

Natalie Schmidt Ferreira

Notre lecture de la première partie de la Vita Nova, fondée à la fois sur le symbolisme du sang présent dans la première vision de Dante et sur la scène initiatique du mariage (le rire des femmes), nous permet de pénétrer dans le réseau symbolique de l'œuvre. Ainsi le sang versé par Paolo et Francesca fait écho au sang de Béatrice, et ne peut être compris que par rapport à une symbolique du livre présente dès la Vita Nova, non seulement avec l'image du "livre de la mémoire", mais surtout avec un cœur mangé compris dans le sens d'un engendrement de l'œuvre. Si la courtoisie ne peut être chez Dante qu'une courtoisie infernale, une courtoisie tournée non seulement vers les morts mais aussi vers le centre de la terre, il faut alors rejeter toute interprétation moraliste et théologique des valeurs courtoises chez Dante. En ce sens, notre travail invite à une reconsidération de la théologie chez Dante, et surtout du rapport entre Béatrice et la théologie. Et si nous invitons le lecteur de Dante à se montrer prudent non seulement envers des lectures trop moralisatrices de Dante au vingtième siècle, mais aussi envers toute tendance à idéaliser la figure de Béatrice, c'est pour mettre en évidence une double figuration de la différence sexuelle dans l'œuvre du poète: celle d'une union portant à un engendrement et rendant nécessaire la périlleuse traversée de l'Enfer, et celle d'une opposition terrifiante des femmes à l'initiation du poète (dans la Vita Nova)et à la traversée de l'Enfer. C'est ici que nous rencontrons non seulement la figure de Méduse, qui nous conduira à une longue réflexion sur la pétrification chez Dante, mais aussi le mythe d'Orphée, avec une opposition des femmes conduisant, après son voyage dans les régions mythiques de l'Hyperborée, à sa mort tragique lorsqu'il est déchiqueté par les femmes thraces. Ces réflexions nous auront porté non seulement à reconsidérer le sens de la figure d'Orphée dans le deuxième livre du Banquet, mais aussi le sens de l'allusion aux monts Riphée dans le chant XXVI du Purgatoire, en rapport à une symbolique du vent du Nord et du vent du Sud qui traverse une grande partie de l'œuvre du poète. Ainsi prend sens notre étude du cycle des "Rime Petrose", avec la figure pétrifiante de la Dame Pierre (rapprochée de Méduse), et la mise en évidence d'un symbolisme solsticial rendant plus complexe encore la question du dévoilement de Béatrice. Notre travail commençait avec le sang de Béatrice, il s'achève avec le reproche de la dame quant à l'esprit pétrifié et "teint" du poète("impetrato, tinto"), point de convergence d'un double parcours dans l'œuvre, que nous avons appelé le chemin du sang et le chemin de la pierre. / Our interpretation of the first part of the Vita Nova, based on the symbolism of blood present in the first vision of Dante and the initiatic wedding scene (the "gab"), enables us to get an insight of the Dante's symbolic system. One of the main ideas of this work is that love not only leads to death, but also to the experience of the Inferno. In other words, in Dante's work the dialectics of love and death is solved by a confrontation to the realm of the dead, which the poet first experiences when he both witnesses and takes part in the initiatic female rite during the wedding scene of the Vita Nova. Dante's courtly love does not simply come down to the dialectics between passionate love and purified love; thus, the ideal path from Eros to Caritas is being questioned, since Dante's courtly love, which reveals the initiatic structures revolving around Beatrice's unveiling, opens onto the realm of the dead. so any moralist or theological interpretation of Dante's courtly love shouldn't be accepted, whether in the Vita Nova or in the Fifth Canto of the Inferno: love is first and foremost an access to knowledge. We move on to the figure of Medusa and the question of petrification, linked not only to the blood symbolism but to a complex solsticial system. Petrification turns out to be a necessary step of the journey towards Lucifer.

The principal objective of this paper is to analyze Sir Gawain's efforts to balance the conflicting requirements of the Code of Chivalry with the basic needs of human nature to develop insights into the Gawain's character. Using an amalgamated definition of chivalry as the standard, I will examine Gawain's attempts to achieve his goal of being the perfect chivalric knight, determine the nature of his obstacles, and analyze the development of his character. In trying to live up to perfection, Gawain discovers that he is not perfect.