Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts (review)

Pamela Porter's Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts is a beautifully illustrated introduction to courtly love in the high and later Middle Ages. This very light volume is a true visual delight that aims to place "the literary convention in context, distinguishing it from the realities of romantic love in the Middle Ages and highlighting its role in shaping the manners and entertainments of courtly society" (8). The greatest strength of the book is its superb illustrations, excellently reproduced and drawn from over forty different manuscripts from the British Library, where Porter is a former curator. The text, on the other hand, has its limitations, providing more of a running commentary on the images than creating a stand-alone argument.

Using the Victorian fascination with things medieval as a starting point, Porter quickly jumps to a chapter on "Romantic Love in the Middle Ages." As with all the writing in the book, one wishes that Porter would develop some of her points more fully and give them more nuance, yet that is not her goal. Instead, she manages to provide a rather concise and highly readable introduction to the topic of realistic romantic love in medieval Europe. This chapter is placed in contrast to the one that follows, "Courtly Love: The Other Woman," which focuses on the literary genre and its collective champions—troubadours and minnesingers—as well as the individual works that made it so popular. Porter does a good job here of highlighting the importance of the "lady" to the ideal of courtly love. The third and final chapter shifts the focus to the knights and the chivalric culture upon which Porter claims courtly love had such an impact. Much of this chapter is a summary of the more famous Arthurian romances and their importance in bridging the gap between the traditional chansons de geste and the newer courtly love ideals. The chapter culminates with a brief exploration of Chrétien de Troyes's Le Chevalier de la Charette and the love affair between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. As throughout the rest of the book, the attending images in this section are well chosen, providing easy transitions between text and image that are some of the real joys of this book.

Porter's work should have a wide audience. Although aimed primarily as an introduction to the topic, more advanced readers will also benefit from this little volume. I can imagine using it in the classroom to supplement some of the very works she discusses, such as Capellanus's The Art of Courtly Love and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, allowing students to experience not just the words but also the images that were such an integral part of the original manuscripts.

Porter's work, however, is not without faults. The brevity of the text, although intentional, tends to present a society that is rather static. Likewise, her loose use of terms like "medieval" and "Middle Ages" is a bit distracting. To many medievalists the terms represent the period that begins with the fall of the Roman Empire (476) and ends with the Renaissance. Porter's word choice suggests that courtly love was evident throughout this thousand-year period, when this was certainly not the case. The book would have also benefited from a lengthier "Further Reading" section. Considering its target audience of students and nonmedievalists, a bibliography with more than the seven items Porter lists would have been a nice addition. Finally, a few words describing what we might call the darker side of courtly love would have given the book more balance. Although women in courtly love literature were idealized, we must also remember that they became the object that the gallant knight sought to gain. Idealized or not, the women were often tokens of conquest in the martial world of their male lovers. Moreover, these idealized women were always noble. Peasant and lower-class women fared rather differently. The same writer who could tell his readers to "be obedient in all things to...