Dialogues of Love and Government: A Study of the Erotic Dialogue Form in Some Texts from the Courtly Love Tradition

Author / Editor
Spencer, Alice.

Title
Dialogues of Love and Government: A Study of the Erotic Dialogue Form in Some Texts from the Courtly Love Tradition

Published
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.

Physical Description
x, 234 pp. 3 b&w illus.

Description
Studies the "Boethian dialogue model in literature concerned with courtly love," treating the literature as examples of dialogue rather than dream vision and examining the relationship between the hierarchical, upward-leading erotics of this literature and its worldly, political implications and applications. Considers the Platonic, Augustinian roots of form and theme in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and the pervasive influence of the treatise on Dante and on French and English writers--Machaut, Froissart, Usk, Gower, the Pearl poet, and more. Discusses narcissism and the dream of Morpheus in BD and assesses autocratic power and the marguerite tradition in LGWP. Chaucer's poems explore ironies.

Chaucer Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Book of the Duchess
Legend of Good Women