Chivalric Bonds and the Ideals of Friendship

Abstract

Two important classical treatises on friendship are Books VIII and XI from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero’s De amicitia. Some of the ideas regarding male—male intimate relations expressed in these texts are reformulated by medieval clerics and dramatized in chivalric romances such as Amys and Amylion and the Prose Lancelot. According to Aristotle, there are three types of friendship, which are distinguished by whether the object of love is based on utility, pleasure, or good. The first two, he maintains, are not ideal because they cannot last: “these sorts of friendships are easily dissolved, when the friends do not remain similar [to what they were]; for if someone is no longer pleasant or useful, the other stops loving him.”1 It is only the last one that can lead to true, long-lasting friendship, for “these people’s friendship lasts as long as they are good; and virtue is enduring.”2 The three types are, however, not mutually exclusive. Ideal friendship based on moral goodness encompasses the other less-perfect types and raises them to a perfect whole: “good people are both unconditionally good and advantageous for each other. They are pleasant in the same ways too, since good people are pleasant both unconditionally and for each other.”3 As H. H. Joachim aptly summarizes: “The main characteristic of ideal friendship is its inclusiveness: each friend loves the other because that other is what he is, i.e. the whole character or personality of each friend is comprehended in the union.”4KeywordsTrue FriendshipAmorous RelationshipErotic LoveMutual LoveArthurian RomanceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.