Theme is “Love in the Middle Ages”
The University of New Mexico’s Institute for Medieval Studies celebrates the 25th anniversary of its spring lecture series with the theme, “Love in the Middle Ages,” April 12–15. Events include six lectures and a concert. The lectures will take place in Woodward Hall, room 101 on the main UNM campus, and the concert in UNM Center for the Arts, Keller Hall. The lecture series, supported by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council, is free and open to the public.
The opening lecture is Monday, April 12 at 7:15 p.m. and continues with 5:15 and 7:15 p.m. sessions on the following three days. Six internationally prominent visiting speakers will attend, including award-winning faculty from Northwestern University, William and Mary College, Southern Methodist University, Grand Valley State University, the University of Iowa and Rice University.
The concert, scheduled for Thursday, April 15, 5:15 p.m. in Keller Hall, features UNM Early Music Ensemble, directed by Colleen Sheinberg, founder-member and co-director of Música Antigua de Albuquerque.
“Love in the Middle Ages” will include presentations on topics that have exercised an enduring fascination on the public imagination. Two lectures focus on troubadours, poet-minstrels of southern France whose preoccupations with romantic love between man and woman were fueled by their contact with the Muslim courts of medieval Spain.
One lecture looks specifically at the concept of love as it emerges from troubadour culture and poetry while the other investigates the originality of the musical forms developed by the troubadours as settings for their poems. No medieval literary tradition has exercised greater influence across the ages than the Arthurian legends with their exaltation of the concepts of chivalry and courtly love and their portrayal of life-changing quests.
The series includes an exploration of the vicissitudes of romance in the Arthurian tales of medieval England. Perhaps the most famous, if ill-starred, pair of medieval lovers were Abelard and Heloise. Their passionate affair, which ended in his castration and her dispatch to a nunnery, is chronicled in a remarkable set of love letters—whose authenticity has sometimes been questioned—as well as in Abelard’s vivid autobiography, The History of My Calamities.
One lecture investigates the couple’s relationship from Heloise’s standpoint; examining the part she played in helping Abelard acquire his reputation as the greatest philosopher of his time. In the Middle Ages just as in the present, love often refused to confine itself within legal and social norms; the series includes a presentation examining romantic attachments of those on the outer edges of society who resisted efforts to regulate their love lives. The final lecture offers a witty and visually delightful exploration of the representation of sexual intimacy in late medieval and early modern art, from Van Eyck’s famous 15th-century representation of the betrothal of the Arnolfinis to the erotically suggestive 17th-century portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton.
“Love in the Middle Ages” informs and entertains, offering audiences the opportunity to learn from and interact with speakers who are at the very forefront of their fields.
The lectures:
Monday, April 12, 7:15 p.m.
William Paden, “Troubadour Love”
According to widespread belief, troubadour poetry had nothing in common with marriage in its time and place, the High Middle Ages in the south of France. In this view the poets sang of adulterous desire, whether consummated or not, and marriage had nothing to do with love since it was usually arranged by two families with little regard for the feeling of those to be married. This belief, based on few poetic texts and little investigation of the historical evidence, should be revised. Abundant sources regarding marriage show that it did involve love, and love was the dominant theme of troubadour poetry. But could poetry refer to marriage? It could and did, but not very often, perhaps about as often as it referred to adultery. The poets sang of love; usually this love sought neither to violate marriage nor to support it, although it might lead to it. The infrequence of marriage as a theme in troubadour love poetry relates to its lack of institutional status: marriage was not yet established as a sacrament, and had no connection to the state as it does today. Marriage was a social practice, as was poetry. The poets focused on love without giving much thought to its implications for marriage, though the potential implications must always have been close at hand.
Tuesday, April 13, 5:15 p.m.
George Greenia, “Passion and Restraint: Love among the Lawless”
Love in the Middles Ages was formalized in theology, spirituality and song, but jurists too plied their trade reining in love-making among the unruly. Law codes labored to safeguard consecrated marital love and set it apart from the wide variety of casual alliances that formed, dissolved and sometimes left children in their wake. The re-conquest frontiers of medieval Spain defined instances of criminal conduct and established ways to normalize relationships that sprung from wayward behavior by adventurous women, and still other ladies who should have been more circumspect in their sacred precincts and along the sacred trails of pilgrimage.
Tuesday, April 13, 7:15 p.m.
Bonnie Wheeler, “Enduring Love in English Arthurian Romance”
How do literary characters engage in romantic relations in medieval English romance, especially romances of King Arthur and his chivalric court? If romantic love is an ideal, how is it achieved? If passionate engagement is a requirement for the fully noble secular knight, how does such passion propel a fully realized life? If passion goes awry, how does one endure its consequences? In this lecture, Bonnie Wheeler will look especially at such famed lovers as Sir Gawain and Lady Bertilak, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, as well as Lady Elayne and Sir Tristram and the Isoldes along with such fugue characters as Sir Pelleas and Lady Ettarde, as she considers some medieval English modes of loving and being loved.
Wednesday, April 14, 5:15 p.m.
William Levitan, “Heloise and the Passions of Reason”
Levitan’s lecture focuses on the afterlife of Heloise and Abelard, that is, on some of the ways in which they have been understood and represented in later centuries. For their celebrated love affair has less often been viewed as the experience of unique individuals in a specific historical circumstance than as a compendious myth of love onto which different generations have cast their own notions of love’s nature and character. More pointedly, Heloise has retained the status of a paradigmatic woman-in-love even as the understanding of what that paradigm is has changed significantly. The lecture will discuss the shifts in the ways Heloise’s love has been seen and in particular will concentrate on the intellectual passion that was never far from the surface of her love for Abelard and that formed the basis of their decades-long intellectual collaboration. It is this passion—the passion of the independent, educated woman—that more than any other feature has characterized the representation of Heloise in recent times.
Wednesday, April 14, 7:15 p.m.
Elizabeth Aubrey, “Singing of Love in the Middle Ages”
During the 12th and 13th centuries in the region of what is now southern France, a new type of song blossomed, an extraordinarily powerful and engaging new poetry sung to a new style of music. Most of these songs were about love in its many manifestations. The poetry is full of vibrant images and creative language to express the broad range of feelings associated with this most fundamental of human emotions. The melodies follow closely the carefully crafted structures of the poems: they were relatively short, sometimes elegantly simple and accessible, sometimes soaring and dramatic, all quite unlike the long, sometimes monotonous, and remote melodies of church plainchant to which medieval hearers were accustomed. But it is difficult to explain what it is about a particular melody that effectively captures the meaning of the words, just as it is for any popular love song today. If the poet-lover is rejoicing in his good fortune, what musical notes does he use to express his joy? If she is despondent over her lover’s departure, what melodic gestures can capture her dismay? If the lover complains that his beloved is ignoring him, how does the melody convey his frustration? Aubrey’s lecture explores what it was about this music that was able to express the multifarious themes of love of which the poems spoke so eloquently.
Thursday, April 15, 5:15 p.m.
Concert by the UNM Early Music Ensemble directed by Colleen Sheinberg: “Love and Dalliance in Medieval Music”
Thursday, April 15, 7:15 p.m.
Diane Wolfthal, “In and Out of the Marital Bed: Picturing Marital Sex from the Arnolfinis to Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton”
Wolfthal traces the changing nature of marriage from the ideal of the chaste marital bed to the belief in a companionate marriage, which embraces romantic love and physical passion. Earlier images, such as the Arnolfini portrait, dated 1434, reflect and reinforce the Church teaching that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, performed in a particular manner, and reserved for specific purposes, and that any deviation from this practice was deemed sinful. But later works reveal a change in attitude. The portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, dated around 1600, is perhaps the first to place a wife at the center of a private erotic fantasy. This portrait opens a window through which to explore how one couple defied the moralizing judgments of their age and chose instead to embrace the notion of the joy of marital sex. If earlier images construct marriage as the opposite of adultery, later ones show that adultery sometimes served as a model for marriage, instilling it with the ideals of romantic love and sexual desire. The portrait of Elizabeth Vernon makes clear that despite moralists’ condemnation of premarital sex, secret weddings, and even at times the enjoyment of conjugal sex, some couples chose to privately celebrate their sexuality.
For specific biography information on a particular lecturer, click on the individual's name. For a complete list of lecturers biographies visit: Institute for Medieval Studies Spring Lecture Series.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Posted by cgonzal at April 5, 2010 04:58 PM