Evidence for medieval thinking about marriage, drawn from a number of literary texts.
This book uses literary texts to trace the development of medieval thinking about marriage in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, taking into account not only important developments in theological and legal thinking about marriage during this period, but conventions such as ‘courtly love', which affect its portrayal in literary texts. The focus of this study is upon England, and specifically three groups of texts linked together by English manuscripts -the ‘AB'-Group, containing the
Ancrene Wisse; The Owl and the Nightingale
and its companion-pieces; and finally the
Life
of St Christina of Markyate and the
Chanson de Saint Alexis
which she once owned. The author demonstrates the continuity of these texts in their attitude towards marriage, along with continental works such as the letters of Abelard and Heloise, and Chrétien de Troyes'
Erec et Enide
. Throughout, the volume clearly and accessibly shows how the imaginative literature of the period participated in the evolution of a new and enduring ideology of marriage.
Dr
NEIL CARTLIDGE
is a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford.