Courtly Love Research Articles

“With middal smal and wel ymake”: Objectification and Power in Medieval English Love Songs

Through reading sets of medieval love songs one can notice trends that are connected to the conventions of fin’amor or courtly love. Troubadours, medieval French poets, would compose and sing songs that reflect the trends of courtly love during the time period. Within the lyrics of these songs there are two main trends when it comes to the objectification of the female beloved. First, they spend a great deal of time in describing the physicality of the beloved, but make no inferences or connections to her interior life—going so far as to animalize her. Even when those beautiful features may be manufactured, their artificiality still supersedes her personhood. Second, they use the lyric technique of reprisal to formally reinforce sense of woman as inanimate. Using the anonymous “Alison” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Complaint to his Purse” as example cases, in this essay I demonstrate the techniques that effect this displacement of power, as well as how they are still prevalent in popular music today. Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Elizabeth E. Tavares

RECEPCJA ŚREDNIOWIECZNYCH MOTYWÓW W ŚWIECIE GWIEZDNYCH WOJEN

The paper makes up an attempt to systematize and occasionally verify the views on the medieval motifs which were to be used while creating the world of Star Wars. The synchronic method applied in various publications lies behind opinions according to which the inspiration here included: Arthurian legends, the medieval concept of minne, visions of hell, the history and tradition of the Knights Templar, as well as the samurai in feudal Japan. These opinions cannot be regarded as entirely grounded. The remarks on the reception of some motifs related to the samurai or the Knights Templar seem justified as well as the plot of courtly love and the medieval image of hell. However, insistent juxtaposing, among others, of the individual stages of the lives of the saga’s main characters with the fortunes of king Arthur is controversial.

ZEKİ DEMİRKUBUZ FİLMLERİNDE ARZU VE İHANET

This article analyses four flms by Zeki Demirkubuz, Kor (Ember, 2016), İtiraf (Confession, 2001), Masumiyet (Innocence, 1997), and Kader (Destiny, 2006), which deal with the themes of unrequited love, jealousy, and betrayal. Analysis reveals the dynamics of desire in these four flms. Kor and İtiraf, both of which depict the sad plight of jealous husbands who agonize over their wives’ infdelity, illustrate Rene Girard’s theory of triangular desire by introducing a third person in the genesis and perpetuation of the subject’s desire. Masumiyet and Kader, on the other hand, are interpreted as modern takes on the theme of courtly love, in which the lover elevates the beloved to the status of sublime object. Masumiyet and Kader are analysed through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly in relation to Lacan’s and Zizek’s writings on the anamorphic gaze and masochistic contract present in courtly love. The article shows that all four flms demystify the concept of romantic love, thereby demonstrating Lacan’s contention that a spontaneous, unmediated and harmonious sexual relationship between a man and a woman is impossible.

The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus

Reviewed by: The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus Laurence M. V. Totelin Hermann Herlinghaus, ed. The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2018. viii + 392 pp. €38.00 (978-3-8253-6740-4). The ancient Greek word pharmakon has three main meanings: that of healing drug, that of poison, and that of magic potion. Since the third meaning is relatively close to that of "poison," one can say, together with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that pharmakon is a dipole concept. Its two poles, however, cannot be construed simply in terms of bad and good; the Greeks did not conceive of the pharmakon in a moralizing, dogmatic way. This volume takes the Greek notion of pharmakon as a way of entry into a reflection on the complexities of the "pharmacological imagination," a reflection that avoids the simplistic logic of good versus bad. It aims to challenge and problematize a narrow understanding of the notion of "drug"—a narrow "pharmacologicalism"—where drugs are reduced to their bio- and neurochemical effects, and where their use is classified as good (under medical supervision, controlled) or bad (addiction). Instead, the notion of "drug" must be contextualized and historicized, its appearances in literature and philosophy must be analyzed. In the opening chapter Mike Jay demonstrates that the pejorative meaning of "drug" as an illegal psychoactive substance is relatively new. He shows that the concept was codified in law only in the twentieth century, starting with the [End Page 453] Hague International Opium Conference in 1912 and culminating with the 1961 UN Single Convention on Drugs, where drug addiction was termed an "evil." Very soon, however, with the rise of the counterculture, the consensus around "bad" drugs began to fracture. The pharmakon always resists simplistic moralizing conceptualizations. There follow thirteen varied and thought-provoking chapters, exploring themes as diverse as the north-south and transatlantic dynamics in the conceptualization of tobacco (Hermann Herlinghaus and Arne Romanowski); the Chinese American author Maxine Hong Kingston as a voice of the 1960s counterculture (Agniezka Soltysik Monnet); narratives of courtly love written in the twelfth century (Cornelia Wild); the theme of intoxication in the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's work (Diemo Landgraf); and the nineteenth-century experimental project with hashish conducted by the French psychiatrist Moreau de Tours (Katrin Solhdju). Like the pharmakon, the volume cannot be easily summarized and classified. The four sections into which Herlinghaus divided the essays (renarrations into the twentieth century; hemispheric scenarios—cultural explorations; aesthetics and poetology; interfaces) are relatively loose and flow into each other in a fruitful way—rigidity would be counterproductive here. A personal highlight was the chapter "Promise and Deceit: Pharmakos, Drug Replacement Therapy, and the Perils of Experience" by Todd Meyers (which had been previously published in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 38 [2014]). Here the author explores the lies he dealt with in his anthropological fieldwork among adolescents abusing heroin, with a focus on the touching story of "Megan" and "Cedric." Meyers argues that the Greek notion of pharmakos, the scapegoat that cleansed a city of its evil, is good to think with when studying addict-patients. He movingly writes "the pharmakos-pharmakon (pharmakeus) is a lie told in order to make the act of healing possible. And the patient-subject is, by necessity, ruined" (p. 334). Plato's Phaedrus and Derrida's "La pharmacie de Platon" (1972) quite naturally play a prominent role in this collection of essays. Martin Treml offers a good chapter on the topic of the pharmakon in ancient Greek traditions. The volume, however, could perhaps have included more on the ancient world. At times, authors appeared to derive their knowledge of the Phaedrus mostly from Michael Rinella's Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens (2010)—there is a wealth of other scholarship on the topic. Nor did the editor settle for a single spelling of "Phaedrus" and other frequently mentioned Greek names. But it is perhaps facile for a historian of ancient medicine to pick on such small points. Generally, I found the volume engaging and stimulating. I particularly enjoyed seeing the theme of love as a drug emerge in several...

Thomas Malory'nin Arthur'un Ölümü Eserinde Saraylı Usulü Aşk Geleneğinin Tersyüz Edilmesi: Tristan ve İsolde Meselesi

Courtly love convention is a medieval European concept of ennobling love which helped the shaping of the society and in return which was shaped by the society during the Middle Ages. The concept has its roots in many traditions such as classical literature, Hispano-Arabic poetry and philosophy, Troubadour poetry, feudalism and Christianity. However, there are also writers who were critical and suspicious of courtly love convention. Sir Thomas Malory (c.1410-1471) presents a subtle criticism of the concept in his Le Morte Darthur (1485), the first collection that brings together all the Arthurian stories in English. One-third of this work consists of a controversial love story, the case of Tristan and Isolde. Therefore, Malory’s different treatment of the courtly love tradition and the Tristan story will be illustrated with the critical information on the Celtic sources of the legend and a comparative method to other significant characters involved in the courtly love in this work.

The Bride and the Wounds − "columba mea in foraminibus petrae" (Ct. 2.14)

The dove – as a term of endearment from the Song of Songs – constitutes a subtle recurring sign throughout a medieval mystical tradition that links it to Christ's wounds and therefore to human anatomy, as well as to the poetic traditions of courtly love.

“It's a Service that I Kneel for to You”: Failure of Courtly Love in The Changeling

“It's a Service that I Kneel for to You”: Failure of Courtly Love in The Changeling

The Donna Angelica in Disraeli’s The Young Duke

Medieval and early modern European literatures of courtly love often idealize a female object of desire as a donna angelica, or angelic lady. Notable examples include Dante’s Beatrice (in his La Vi...

Autumn and May

The article deals with Steinmar’s ‘Autumn-song’. The main focus rests on the first two stanzas of the song, both of which allow conclusions to be drawn about the poetic concept of the song’s author. Special attention is given to the antithesis of Autumn and May, the rejection of courtly love and the literary roles. The so-called ‘Gebewîn-Problem’ is revealed in a new light. The article also contains an interpretation of the miniature. A view of the autumn subject with the Monk of Salzburg in comparison to Steinmar concludes the article.

After Sovereignty/After Virtue

This response reads the phrase "after sovereignty" as a turn on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. I then recommend the virtue of respect as a way of reframing key scenes in Measure for Measure, including the bed trick and the duke's final proposal. Respect belongs to the Kantian realm of a universal, maxim-based moral theory that replaces the Aristotelian regime of virtue championed by MacIntyre, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Hannah Arendt, but also has its roots in liturgical practices of the sublime that affiliate respect with political theology and the carnal sublimations of courtly love. Shakespearean drama both participates in the Aristotelian virtue tradition and tests its limits, predicting the modernization of aretê in liberalism.

Crusade in the Bedroom

This essay offers a new reading of Carmen Buranus no. 48 as an integrated Latin-vernacular hybrid in which secular courtly love, represented in the stanza from the Tagelied by Otto von Botenlouben that concludes the Latin poem, is conscripted into a crusading agenda and subverted. The call of the dawnsong watchman, taken up by the lady, becomes the call to crusade for the knight. The proposed dating and context is ca. 1213, during the propagandistic run-up to the fifth crusade, which caused controversy in German courtly circles (Walther von der Vogelweide, Thomasin von Zerklaere).

Itinerarios cervantinos by Víctor Ivanovici

Reviewed by: Itinerarios cervantinos by Víctor Ivanovici Jennifer Darrell Ivanovici, Víctor. Itinerarios cervantinos. Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana Benjamín Carrión, 2016. Pp. 356. ISBN 978-9-97862-873-7. Víctor Ivanovici has written Itinerarios cervantinos as a travel log of sorts, a record of his scholarly pursuits in and around the world of Cervantes. His critical work has not been devoted entirely, nor even primarily, to Cervantes; rather, he has spent most of his career pursuing interests ranging from Greek surrealist poetry to translation studies. A true polyglot, Ivanovici has published books and articles in Romanian, Greek, Spanish, and French, and he also works with Italian, Catalan, and Portuguese in his translations. He frames this book as a personal itinerary of his thought on Cervantes, and the broad range of his scholarly expertise suggests that he is well-positioned to offer fresh insights on Cervantes's work inspired by his familiarity with literary canons not typically connected with the Spanish master. Ivanovici divides Itinerarios cervantinos into two primary sections. The first, "Parajes, paisajes, personajes," focuses primarily on the Novelas ejemplares. In the first essay, "Una novela de familia," Ivanovici argues that in La Gitanilla, Cervantes performs an intentional misreading of his literary precursors to conceal any evidence of their influence. The following essay, "De cara al cristianismo cósmico," suggests that the magical elements present in several Novelas ejemplares represent a fusion of folkloric religious rituals with the courtly love tradition. Finally, in "Locuras heróico-bucólicas en la Arcadia quijotesca," Ivanovici examines Cervantes's introduction of violence into the pastoral mode through an analysis of five pastoral episodes in Don Quixote. The second main section, "El Quijote como forma abierta (cuatro aproximaciones)," delves into the heart of Cervantes's masterpiece. The first essay, "De la mímesis a la parodia," analyzes the distinctions between classical and baroque literature, calling attention to the shift from imitation to parody. In "El arte de novelar," Ivanovici discusses the perspectivism created in Don Quixote by the juxtaposition of three narrative voices: Don Quixote's, Sancho Panza's, and the narrator's. In "El arte del palimpsesto," he suggests that Cervantes creates a literary palimpsest in the Quixote through the interplay between the novel's various, often conflicting, levels of interpretation. In the final essay of this section, "Héroe y personaje," Ivanovici performs a typological reading of the novel's characters. Ivanovici concludes his book with a brief "Despedida" that traces three ways in which the Quixote's legacy has endured: through its critical reception, the influence it has had on other literary works, and translations of the text. Methodologically, Ivanovici aims to follow Cervantes in his "tanteos y rodeos," and there is no doubt that he accomplishes this goal. Ivanovici not only covers many topics, as previously outlined, but he also employs a wide range of critical approaches, beginning with psychoanalysis, and moving on through Marxism, Russian formalism, structuralism, literary semiotics, and new historicism. While he often abruptly sheds one critical method for the next, which can be disorienting, it is ultimately beneficial that Ivanovici does not limit himself to a single approach, as important work can be done in the liminal spaces between competing schools of literary analysis. For example, Ivanovici's analysis of La Gitanilla is enriched by his blending of insights drawn from psychoanalysis and Marxism, as his reading of Preciosa's sexuality in terms of its use and exchange value adds weight to his argument that the protagonist's latent desires are not oedipal, but rather center on marriage as the fulfillment of her social and sexual desires. Ivanovici's analysis of La Gitanilla is but one of many thought-provoking arguments in his book. While he is not the first to comment on the multiple levels of fiction and reality in Don [End Page 646] Quixote, his approach is unique. He performs a semiotic analysis of the novel as a series of signi-fiers that give rise to multiple, often contradictory, signifieds, ultimately leading him to conclude that Cervantes's critique is directed at the readers of chivalric tales, not the books, since the works are only problematic for those who...

Celestina and the Human Condition in Early Modern Spain and Italy by Rachel Scott

Reviewed by: Celestina and the Human Condition in Early Modern Spain and Italy by Rachel Scott Joseph T. Snow Rachel Scott. Celestina and the Human Condition in Early Modern Spain and Italy. 215 pp. tamesis, 2017, this volume, in its focus on literary manifestations dealing with the misery and dignity of man, examines the peripheries of society as seen in Celestina and four works printed in Italy in the sixteenth century: Fernán Pérez de Oliva's Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre (1546, printed twice in Italy); Il cortegiano (1528) by Baldassare Castiglione; and two of the six parts of Pietro Aretino's Ragionamento (1534–36), La vita delle puttane and Coloquio de las damas, translated into Spanish by Fernán Xuárez. The extremes of society discussed in these works invited contemporary readers to participate in the renegotiation of the significance of what it meant to be a courtly person or a prostitute. As Scott states, "The literary horizon is reconfigured by new interlocutors, and as alternative perspectives on human misery and dignity merge, different nuances come to light" (15). These words succinctly summarize the author's approach and methodology. These works were part of an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be human, especially in the light of one's relationships with other individuals and with the community. In Pérez de Oliva's Diálogo, the theme stressed is self-knowledge as key to coping with earthly and spiritual anxieties. One of its players, Antonio, contends that self-knowledge is edifying and permits man to approach the divine. The second player, Aurelio, opposes that view by claiming that self-knowledge leads to solitude and a loss of self-respect. God is always present for Antonio, but never for Aurelio. A reading of Celestina through these different assessments of selfknowledge leans toward the negative lens of Aurelio, where sexual misconduct is a byproduct of disbelief. Its characters seek independence and some means of control, but not through friendships. Melibea's repressed sexuality invites interpretation by readers; her fantasies revolve around books she has read. Pleberio, in the final auto of the work, blames Love, Fortune, and the World for his failings, confirming Aurelio's view that vile things in the world will indeed lead to isolation. In essence, Celestina transcends the earlier notions that the misery and dignity of man sought to increase faith in [End Page 185] the benevolence of God and his power. Rather than salvation and consolation, Celestina frames doubt and disbelief and challenges a belief in God, thus creating a gulf between the human and the divine. In both Italy and Spain, the arts of good conversation and skilled use of rhetoric were intellectually valued. In Castiglione's Il cortegiano, readers are made aware of an esteemed social use of language defined as courtly. Latin and the vernacular were both part of this ideal, and elegant speech was also considered a performance. Words thus become the elements of a kind of self-fashioning, and the successful courtesan is one who is capable of constructing an identity with words. In the case of Celestina, the identity of its characters—in terms of language—is fashioned on literary models and not on the courtiers around them. For example, conversations between Melibea and Calisto are frequently shown as being at cross-purposes. The rejected Calisto needs a new voice to reach Melibea, and that voice is provided by Celestina. And if the living Calisto is not an ideal courtly lover, Melibea's words after his death make him seem like one. Because language in Celestina cultivates ends that are monetary and sexual—whereas in Il cortegiano language seeks political influence or the attainment of abstract social virtues—Celestina can be seen as a test of whether language could be a civilizing force (98). But dignity is not only associated with the upper courtly class of society. Between different social classes, there was much interplay. In Aretino's La vita delle puttane, human agency is not only determined by morals, but by the kind of free will that struggling to define one's self can achieve. The theme of human agency is of utmost...

Hoofse liefde in Elsschots Het Dwaallicht

Abstract Courtly Love in Elsschot’s Het Dwaallicht (The Will-o’-the-wisp) Willem Elsschots novel Het Dwaallicht (The Will-o’-the-wisp) (1946) contains a story about a miserable, rainy November evening in seaport town Antwerp. Four Afghani sailors are looking for Kloosterstraat 15, the whereabouts of a girl who worked on their ship that morning and promised them a rendezvous after nightfall. Desperately looking for the right direction they run into a neat, respectable married elderly man, Laarmans, who wants to protect these vulnerable foreigners against the suspicion and patronizing attitude of his discourteous citizens. He presents himself as their guide and all evening he leads them through the nocturnal labyrinth of streets and alleys, secretly hoping to get a piece of the pie. Their quest for the girl fails but little by little Laarmans and the Afghani get closer to each other. They end up in an obscure night bar comtemplating their different conceptions of morality, politics and religion. At last they part as dear friends, but before heading home Laarmans does a last but vain attempt to reach the girl at an address he withheld, Lange Ridderstraat 71. Then he bids ‘his brothers’ farewell. Since the sixties of the 20th century this novel has brought about a history of interpretation, to which this article hopes to offer a contribution. It reads the novel as an imagination of the process of sublimation as well as of desublimation. Therefore it follows the track of the Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Two theses come forward, both concerning the lacanian concept of anamorfosis. Primarily the novel as a whole is read as an anamorfosis revealing itself to the reader as a story of courtly love. Secondly the enigmatic fragment about the Lange Ridderstraat, at the very end of the novel, is taken as anamorfosis revealing two things to Laarmans (and via Laarmans to the reader): it puts him off his ambiguous attitude as ‘guide’ and divulges the final meaning of his longing.

The Imaginary Self-portrait in the Poem Roman de la Rose

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter…It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself,” explains the painter who created the evolving portrait of Dorian Gray. Guillaume de Lorris, the author of the medieval poem Roman de la Rose, also presents his soul through the character of the ideal lover, so Amans is a kind of self-portrait. But unlike an ordinary self-portrait, this one does not present the author’s personality. It is painted with words, and such an ekphrastic image is universal or influences the reader in ways that can be explained by the Iser’s reader-response theory. The poem enables the reader to feel love, and transforms him into the ideal courtly lover. As distinct from a painting, the invisible ekphrastic image in this text surpasses appearances and presents the reader with a hidden side of his soul. The object represented by ekphrasis does not exist in the outer world, therefore in the example examined here the reader’s other self is brought into existence. In contrast to a painted self-portrait, which represents the identity of the author, since the picture and the pictured are identical, a word is a sign which refers to something else. A verbal self-portrait which expresses the author’s feelings opens itself up to the reader, who has to complete the image with his imagination. This imaginary image then differs from the external appearance, because it reveals the associated feelings, enables the reader to feel what the author feels, and presents the reader with his other self. The imaginary self-portrait thus does not represent the actual self, but the self that is transformed or improved by the art of love.

The Imaginary Self-portrait in the Poem Roman de la Rose

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter…It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself,” explains the painter who created the evolving portrait of Dorian Gray. Guillaume de Lorris, the author of the medieval poem Roman de la Rose, also presents his soul through the character of the ideal lover, so Amans is a kind of self-portrait. But unlike an ordinary self-portrait, this one does not present the author’s personality. It is painted with words, and such an ekphrastic image is universal or influences the reader in ways that can be explained by the Iser’s reader-response theory. The poem enables the reader to feel love, and transforms him into the ideal courtly lover. As distinct from a painting, the invisible ekphrastic image in this text surpasses appearances and presents the reader with a hidden side of his soul. The object represented by ekphrasis does not exist in the outer world, therefore in the example examined here the reader’s other self is brought into existence. In contrast to a painted self-portrait, which represents the identity of the author, since the picture and the pictured are identical, a word is a sign which refers to something else. A verbal self-portrait which expresses the author’s feelings opens itself up to the reader, who has to complete the image with his imagination. This imaginary image then differs from the external appearance, because it reveals the associated feelings, enables the reader to feel what the author feels, and presents the reader with his other self. The imaginary self-portrait thus does not represent the actual self, but the self that is transformed or improved by the art of love.

Культ Прекрасной Дамы как отражение средневековой концепции несовершенства женской природы

<p>В статье анализируется роль средневековых гендерных идеологий в процессе формирования института куртуазных отношений. Актуальность представленной темы связана с непреходящей значимостью исследований гендерных ролей как обусловленных современной им социокультурной ситуацией, выявления их социальной значимости или, напротив, деструктивного характера. Такие исследования неизбежно сопряжены с изучением, анализом гендерных ролей в исторической ретроспективе. В статье рассматриваются гендерные идеологии западноевропейского Средневековья и их воплощение в социальной практике.</p><p>Представлен анализ всестороннего воздействия представлений о несовершенстве женской природы и необходимости контроля над ней со стороны мужчин на различные сферы частной и общественной жизни средневековых женщин, в частности женщин в наиболее престижных социальных ролях — монахинь и жен. Своды правил и наставлений не умаляли достоинств женщин, избиравших социально ободряемые роли в миру и в рамках церковной организации. Тем не менее женщинам предписывалось оставаться под контролем мужчин и следовать наставлениям, созданным мужчинами.</p><p>Обосновывается идея о том, что институт куртуазных отношений и культ Прекрасной Дамы представляют собой квинтэссенцию средневековых представлений о несовершенстве женской природы. Куртуазные отношения рассматриваются как социальная игра для знатных мужчин, в которой проявление рыцарской доблести и изысканной галантности, а также литературное отражение любовных переживаний для мужчины являются прежде всего атрибутами престижной социальной роли и способом удовлетворить потребность в романтической сублимации своей любви. Женщина в границах этой игры имеет право на существование только по воле мужчины и в границах мужской фантазии. Исключительно воля мужчины-рыцаря, избравшего женщину объектом куртуазной любви, и соответствие правилам куртуазности, созданным мужчинами, позволяет женщине превратиться в Даму.</p><p>Авторы приходят к выводу, о том, что институт куртуазных отношений и его центральная фигура — Прекрасная Дама — представляют собой социальное воплощение средневековой концепции несовершенства женской природы и необходимости контроля над ней со стороны мужчин в наиболее концентрированном виде. Здесь женщина не просто контролируется и «корректируется» мужчиной, как в других женских социальных ролях, но «создается» по его воле и согласно его представлениям об идеале.</p>

From Quest to Brothel: The Demise of the Courtly Love Tradition in La Celestina

From Quest to Brothel: The Demise of the Courtly Love Tradition in La Celestina

Aesthetics of Law and Literary License: An Anatomy of the Legal Imagination

As a normative discipline, law defines its territory according to simple categories which establish absolute principles purporting to offer a single truth as to what is just and unjust, right and wrong, good and bad. In addition, linguistic and extrasemantic devices such as synecdoche, metonymy, rhythm and metaphor serve a referential function with which to penetrate the collective consciousness. The core assumptions derived from the implementation of socio-linguistic mechanisms transform the nature of legal analysis and are embedded within a diverse interplay of meanings. Aesthetic imaginings are evidenced to underpin and sustain ‘law’s symbolic processes and doctrines, institutions and ideas; that is, a realm of limitless fantasy, of free-flowing nomological desire, fixed around, and fixated upon controlling images that condense its central juridical concepts’; as the ‘jurists follow their own poetic and aesthetic criteria, their own spectral laws’ (MacNeil in Novel judgments: legal theory as fiction. Routledge, Oxford, p 9, 2012; Goodrich in Legal emblems and the art of law: obiter depicta as the vision of governance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 155, 2013). Yet still, founded on the negation of its own history, legal practice maintains that juridical arguments comprise only dialectical reasoning about objectively determined concepts: ‘law is a literature which denies its literary qualities. It is a play of words which asserts an absolute seriousness; it is a genre of rhetoric which represses its moments of invention or fiction… it is procedure based upon analogy, metaphor and repetition [that] lays claim to being a cold or disembodied prose’ (Goodrich in Law in the courts of love: literature and other minor jurisprudences. Routledge, Oxford, p 112, 1996). This article will explore the continuing commitment of modern legal practice to particular aesthetic values and how these are crucially implicated in a variety of legal competencies including the formation of key legal concepts and general intellectual activity.

A Bakhtinian Reading of John Donne’s Parody Poem “The Bait”

While conventional critics seek the comic aspect of parody, modernist critics credit parody with questioning mainstream literary trends and subverting literary production. For instance, Mikhail Bakhtin believes in parody’s power to create “a decrowning double” by turning the official worldview up-side-down. For experimental poets like John Donne, parody transcends mere comical imitation into a serious practice. Donne, having lived in the heyday of the Renaissance with its overemphasis on decorum and courtly love, sought refuge in parody to resist and disturb existing norms of versification and offer an alternative worldview. This paper examines John Donne’s parody poem “The Bait” in the light of Bakhtin’s concept of parody as a decrowning double. The analysis shows that not only had Donne resorted to parody to criticize the society, but he also employed it to undermine established rules of poetry. The study concludes that Donne used parody to create an important platform to liberate poetry from dominant modes of versification, invite readers, often by means of defamiliarisation, to reconsider their stance and literary taste, and promote experimental styles; thus, Donne transcends the norms of prevalent courtly love poetry once and for all.