Andreas Capellanus on Love?: Desire, Seduction, and Subversion in a Twelfth-Century Latin Text (Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures)

Andersen-Wyman's book undoes most scholarly uses and understandings of De amore by Andreas Capellanus. By offering a reading promoted by the text itself, Andersen-Wyman shows how Andreas undermines the narrative foundations of sacred and secular institutions and renders their power absurd. Her book offers the best explanation yet for why Andreas's was one of only two books condemned by Bishop Tempier in 1276: the tools Andreas offers his readers, as well as what Andreas suggests about his own desire and what should be the place of women in society, could make his book dangerous in almost any era. Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Preface 12 Introduction 13 The Difficulty of Reading Andreas’s Text 16 Readership and Historical Context 19 The Critics 30 My Approach 37 Outline 41 Note on Translations and Manuscript Edition 45 I: Fish or Fowl (or, Is There a Genre in This Text?) 46 Transgressing the Boundaries of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric 47 Genre Trouble, Reading Instructions, and Other Formalities 51 Deconstructing Gender and Culture: A Reading of the First Five Chapters 59 II: Repetition in Andreas’s Text 77 How Repetition in Andreas’s Text Subverts Social Hierarchies 80 How Repetition in Andreas’s Text Subverts Religion 100 III: On Clerical Intertexts and the Subversion of Seduction 123 Author/ity 126 Positions of Mastery and the Rhetoric of Eros 141 Seduction and Critical Distance 150 On Confessio and the Charm of Free Choice 159 IV: Andreas and Walter 168 Andreas’s Desire Uncovered 169 Identities 182 Readership 190 Feminine Desire and the Transgendered Agents of Andreas’s Text 197 V: Andreas on Women 209 On the Discourse of Misogyny 210 Women’s Religion 234 Notes 244 Bibliography 259 Author Index 272 A 272 B 272 C 272 D 272 F 272 H 272 I 272 J 272 K 272 L 272 M 273 O 273 P 273 R 273 S 273 W 273 Subject Index 274 A 274 B 274 C 274 D 274 E 275 F 275 G 275 H 275 M 275 N 275 P 275 R 275 S 275 T 276 V 276 W 276 Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-33 Fish or Fowl (or, Is There a Genre in This Text?)....Pages 35-65 Repetition in Andreas’s Text....Pages 67-112 On Clerical Intertexts and the Subversion of Seduction....Pages 113-157 Andreas and Walter....Pages 159-199 Andreas on Women....Pages 201-235 Back Matter....Pages 237-273 A new look at Andreas Capellanus's De amore.