Love and its Critics From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden MICHAEL BRYSON AND ARPI MOVSESIAN LOVE AND ITS CRITICS Love and its Critics From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden Michael Bryson and Arpi Movsesian https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2017 Michael Bryson and Arpi Movsesian This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Michael Bryson and Arpi Movsesian, Love and its Critics: From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0117 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/product/611#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www. openbookpublishers.com/product/611#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. California State University Northridge has provided support for the publication of this volume. ISBN Paperback: 978–1-78374–348–3 ISBN Hardback: 978–1-78374–349–0 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978–1-78374–350–6 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978–1-78374–351–3 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978–1-78374–352–0 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0117 Cover image: Ary Scheffer, Dante and Virgil Encountering the Shades of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo in the Underworld (1855), Wikimedia, https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1855_ Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Ghosts_of_Paolo_and_Francesca_Appear_to_Dante_and_Virgil.jpg All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not, writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires. —William Blake, “The Garden of Love”, Songs of Experience Et si notre âme a valu quelque chose, c’est qu’elle a brûlé plus ardemment que quelques autres. —André Gide, Les Nourritures terrestres Die Wissenschaft unter der Optik des Künstlers zu sehn, die Kunst aber unter der des Lebens. —Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik Contents Acknowledgements ix A Note on Sources and Languages x 1. Love and Authority: Love Poetry and its Critics 1 I. The Poetry of Love 1 II. Love’s Nemesis: Demands for Obedience 3 III. Love’s Critics: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion and the 10 Authoritarian Approach to Criticism IV. The Critics: Poetry Is About Poetry 23 V. The Critics: The Author Is Dead (or Merely Irrelevant) 29 2. Channeled, Reformulated, and Controlled: Love Poetry from the 37 Song of Songs to Aeneas and Dido I. Love Poetry and the Critics who Allegorize: The Song of Songs 37 II. Love Poetry and the Critics who Reduce: Ovid’s Amores and 57 Ars Amatoria III. Love or Obedience in Virgil: Aeneas and Dido 77 IV. Love or Obedience in Ovid: Aeneas, Dido, and the Critics 89 who Dismiss 3. Love and its Absences in Late Latin and Greek Poetry 97 I. Love in the Poetry of Late Antiquity: Latin 97 II. Love in the Poetry of Late Antiquity: Greek 113 4. The Troubadours and Fin’amor: Love, Choice, and the Individual 121 I. Why “Courtly Love” Is Not Love 121 II. The Troubadours and Their Critics 136 III. The Troubadours and Love 165 5. Fin’amor Castrated: Abelard, Heloise, and the Critics who Deny 195 6. The Albigensian Crusade and the Death of Fin’amor in Medieval 215 French and English Poetry I. The Death of Fin’amor: The Albigensian Crusade and its 215 Aftermath II. Post-Fin’amor French Poetry: The Roman de la Rose 238 III. Post-Fin’amor English Romance: Love of God and Country 275 in Havelok the Dane and King Horn IV. Post-Fin’amor English Poetry: Mocking “Courtly Love” 280 in Chaucer—the Knight and the Miller V. Post-Fin’amor English Poetry: Mocking “Auctoritee” 286 in Chaucer—the Wife of Bath 7. The Ladder of Love in Italian Poetry and Prose, and the Reactions 295 of the Sixteenth-Century Sonneteers I. The Platonic Ladder of Love 295 II. Post-Fin’amor Italian Poetry: The Sicilian School to Dante 300 and Petrarch III. Post-Fin’amor Italian Prose: Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of 330 the Courtier) IV. The Sixteenth-Century: Post-Fin’amor Transitions in 336 Petrarchan-Influenced Poetry 8. Shakespeare: The Return of Fin’amor 353 I. The Value of the Individual in the Sonnets 353 II. Shakespeare’s Plays: Children as Property 367 III. Love as Resistance: Silvia and Hermia 378 IV. Love as Resistance: Juliet and the Critics who Disdain 393 9. Love and its Costs in Seventeenth-Century Literature 421 I. Carpe Diem in Life and Marriage: John Donne and the 422 Critics who Distance II. The Lyricist of Carpe Diem: Robert Herrick and the 445 Critics who Distort 10. Paradise Lost: Love in Eden, and the Critics who Obey 467 Epilogue. Belonging to Poetry: A Reparative Reading 501 Bibliography 513 Index 553 Acknowledgements This book emerges from multiple experiences and perspectives: teaching students at California State University and the University of California; leaving a religious tradition, and leaving a country and an entire way of life; extensive written and verbal conversations with people from all over the world—from the Middle East, Africa, Sri Lanka, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Asian Pacific Rim; and finally, an attempt to understand what has happened to the study of poetry, especially love poetry, in modern literary education. Our thanks go out to Alessandra Tosi, Lucy Barnes and Francesca Giovannetti at Open Book Publishers, who worked tirelessly with us on the manuscript to make this book possible. Thanks are due especially to Nazanin Keynejad, who read and commented upon the first draft of this book, and to Modje Taavon, who provided valuable insight into the similarities between the early modern European and contemporary Middle Eastern cultures. Special thanks are also due to Robert Bryson, Naomi Bryson, Heather Bryson, Alan Wolstrup, Steven Wolstrup, Yeprem Movsesian, Ruzan Petrosian, Haik Movsesian, and Edgar Movsesian, not only for their differing experiences and perspectives, but for personal encouragement and support. A Note on Sources and Languages This book works with material that spans two thousand years and multiple languages. Many, though by no means all, of the sources it works with are from older editions that are publicly available online. This is done deliberately in order to allow readers who may not be attached to insitutions with well-endowed libraries to access as much of the information that informs this work as possible, without encountering paywalls or other access restrictions. It was not possible to follow this procedure in all cases, but every effort has been made. Where the book works with texts in languages other than English, the original is provided along with an English translation. This is done in order to emphasize that the poetic and critical tradition spans both time and place, reflecting arguments that are conducted in multiple language traditions. This is also done, frankly, to make a point about language education in the English- speaking world, especially in the United States, where foreign-language requirements are increasingly being questioned and enrollment figures have declined over the last half-century—according to the 2015 MLA report, language enrollments per 100 American college students stands at 8.1 as of 2013, which is half of the ratio from 1960 (https://www.mla. org/content/download/31180/1452509/EMB_enrllmnts_nonEngl_2013. pdf, 37). Languages matter. Words matter. One of the arguments of this book is that the specific words and intentions of the poets and the critics matter; though English translation is necessary, it is not sufficient. Quoting the original words of the poets and the critics is a way of giving the authors their voice. 1. Love and Authority: Love Poetry and its Critics I The Poetry of Love Love has always had its critics. They range far and wide throughout history, from Plato and the Neoplatonists, to the Rabbinic and Christian interpreters of the Song of Songs, from the clerics behind the savage Albigensian Crusade, to the seventeenth-century English Puritan author William Prynne, who never met a joy he failed to condemn. Love has never lacked for those who try to tame it for “higher” purposes, or those who would argue that “the worst evils have been committed in the name of love”.1 At the same time, love has always had its passionate defenders, though these have more often tended to be poets—the Ovids, Shakespeares, and Donnes—than critics of poetry.