SC - Looking for SCA Brewers

[CorwynWdwd@aol.com]

Elaine Koogler wrote:
> 
> What about something having to do with Eleanor of Acquitaine's Courts of Love?
> and the whole concept of "courtly love"?
> 
> Kiri
> 
> Stefan li Rous wrote:

> > Well, that's the closest things I have documentation for in the files
> > in the Florilegium. Although there is the flirting-msg file.

The whole 'Courtly Love' thing, while attractive, has its own drawbacks.
The academic community is far from united on whether or not the 'Courts
of Love' actually existed. They are a common literary trope, but that
does not mean that they were in actual practice any more than something
in Margaret Mitchell's imagination means that is was common to make a
ball gown out of your mother's velvet drapes...

There are two main trains of thought (based on the work I did a couple
of years ago in seminar): first, that the concepts of Courtly Love and
Courts of Love (which may or may not be a totally different
manifestation) were invented and held as an ideal in an attempt to put
some 'civilization' into the fighting class. One of the enduring
questions for that approach is what to do with the alleged courtly love
relationships- which if carried out (young man and his lord's wife)
would be immoral, illegal, and undermine the fabric of the society as it
was structured in the 12th century- still mostly built on bonds of faith
between lords and vassals.

The other approach is that it was a pleasant pasttime and largely
play-acting, something like the highly formalized courtship patterns we
see in Jane Austen's novels, or in the upper middle class in the
Victorian era. With either appraoch, the cynicism level is pretty high.
It must be noted that: while there are a handful of literary references
to Courts of Love, there is no actual historical evidence that Eleanor
was involved in one. There was, however, evidence that she was widely
believed to be, which is the long run may be roughly the same thing when
you are talking about popular concepts. Certainly the National Enquirer
of the day (writers of lais and Troubadours) thought that she was the
very center of the movement. even though she spent most of the time
concerned in close confinement...

And if you really read Andreas Capellanus' _Art of Courtly Love_, it is
pretty cynical itself. And tehre are elements that I don't want to see
re-created, such as the ideas that a man of a higher class has the right
to demand sexual favors of a woman of a lower class- essentially because
it is a breach of social order for her to say no. Some things are best
left in the past.

OBLIGATORY FOOD CONTENT: one of Marie de france's more famous Lais
(Lanvin? I forget and the book is not handy) involves a jealous husband
who kills his wife lover and serves the man's heart to her at dinner,
after which she commits suicide of course. Hmm. Seems to me we recently
had a post from someone who might have recipes for that dish? ;-)
(EEEYuew)

I'm going back to my kleenex and tea and warm bed now, *snif*

'Lainie