Abstract

The text of Andreas Capellanus on love has long been cited by medievalists either as the ultimate medieval authority on "courtly love" or as in some way reflecting the sexual ethics of the period. By relying predominantly upon a close reading of the text, rather than upon the works of medievalists over the last century, the text renders a very different set of suggestions than previously supposed. The close reading is based upon medieval techniques of reading as well as upon the works of critical theorists in this century, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Luce Irigaray, Teresa de Lauretis, and others. Taking the text apart from what has been traditionally suggested as being possible for a twelfth-century text to perform, that is, allowing it to speak for itself, the text appears to offer a set of social critiques, especially of hierarchies of gender and class. It also offers the reader a set of exegetical tools which free the reader to choose whether and how to allow the social conscription of his or her desire to be effected. Suggestions toward revising the academic disciplines of medieval studies result from this reading, specifically: that we do away with past tendencies to monolithic generalizations, especially those which unduly limit the sophistication of earlier centuries; that we make our generalizations across time rather than limiting them to eras; and that we do not conversely assume that the inevitable otherness of medieval works renders them beyond our ken