Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages

In this volume Georges Duby - member of the Academie Francaise and one of the preeminent medieval scholars of our time - addresses the theme of love and marriage in the Middle Ages. These essays enrich Duby's position as the virtual progenitor and unequalled master of medieval social history. Rather than charting the evolution of love as a mere history of feelings, passions, and mentalities independent of or isolated from the history of other components of social education, Duby places this evolution in the material context of social relationships and daily life. Examining the poetry and practice of courtly love and the mores of aristocratic marriages, Duby shows the Middle Ages to be male-dominated. Women were regarded as symbols, as figures of temptation who paradoxically had no desires of their own. Duby argues that the structure of sexual relationships took its cue from the family and from feudalism - both bastions of masculinity. Duby also reflects on general issues in the writing of cultural history, on the history of pain and heresy, and gives a personal view of the state of historical research in France over recent generations. He argues that the rapid growth of interest in the history of marriage and the family reflects contemporary disquiet stemming from crises in the familiar structures of late twentieth-century society. Beautifully written in Duby's characteristically nuanced and powerful style, this collection is the ideal entree into Duby's thinking about marriage and the diversities of love, spousal decorum, family structure, and their cultural context in bodily and spiritual values. It will be of great interest to students in social and cultural history, in medieval andearly modern history, and in women's studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience interested in the nature of social life in the Middle Ages.