Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 An Eye for Truth and Beauty: A Metaphysical Preface to Middle English Literature of Love and Knowledge
- 2 A Two-fold Symbol of Knowledge: Sight in Natural Philosophy
- 3 The Hostility of Love and Knowledge: Sight in Medieval Love Poetry
- 4 The Hospitality of Love and Knowledge, I: The Shared Language and Shared Ideas of Erotic Love and Spiritual Love
- 5 The Hospitality of Love and Knowledge, II: Erotic Love and Natural Philosophy Revisited
- 6 The Interference of Self-reflexiveness: The Poet and the Parasitisme of Love and Knowledge
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Hospitality of Love and Knowledge, I: The Shared Language and Shared Ideas of Erotic Love and Spiritual Love
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 An Eye for Truth and Beauty: A Metaphysical Preface to Middle English Literature of Love and Knowledge
- 2 A Two-fold Symbol of Knowledge: Sight in Natural Philosophy
- 3 The Hostility of Love and Knowledge: Sight in Medieval Love Poetry
- 4 The Hospitality of Love and Knowledge, I: The Shared Language and Shared Ideas of Erotic Love and Spiritual Love
- 5 The Hospitality of Love and Knowledge, II: Erotic Love and Natural Philosophy Revisited
- 6 The Interference of Self-reflexiveness: The Poet and the Parasitisme of Love and Knowledge
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
La bellezza ch' io vidi si trasmoda
non pur di la da noi, ma certo io credo
che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.
…
Dal primo giomo ch' i' vidi il suo vim
in questa vita, infino a questa vista,
non m'é il seguire al mio cantar preciso.
(Dante)(The beauty I saw not only surpasses our measures, but I surely believe that only its Maker has all the joy of it. … From the first day I saw her face in this life until this sight the pursuit in my song has not been cut off.)
In the complex system where the language of metaphysics and that of erotic love overlaps to create registers of meaning, the convention of the simple hostility between love and knowledge acquires the quality of nonfunctioning. Hostility is complicated by symbiosis. The articulation of love in medieval literature involves considerable overlap of language used to describe either sensual or religious experience. Medieval formulations of the relationship between spiritual and sensual love are varied and complex. In the surpassing vision of his beloved Beatrice, Dante reflects on the history of his earthly love far her, a love that has found various expressions in the full range of his writings, from the Vita Nuova to the Paradiso. He uses recollection of physical experience as the basis to express the transport of what is now a thoroughly spirihml episode; sight not only provides the link but encapsulates the essence of either experience.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Chaucer on Love, Knowledge and Sight , pp. 115 - 151Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 1995