Universitat de València Departament Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya

A glossary for the study of language and literature


[page in process !! ]

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Bibliography

        Keywords (Raymond Williams)


A

adaptation | alliterative revival | alliterative verse | Animal Studies |

adaptation

Speaking of theatrical adaptation: "naturalizar teatro en una nueva cultura meta para lograr el 'efecto equivalente' de que habla Newmark; acomodar, adecuar y ajustar particulares a las espectativas de un colectivo distinto, separado del primero por un ampio gap socio-cultural de tiempo o spacio" (Santoyo "Traducciones" 104)


"An acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or works. A creative and an interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging. An extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work." (Hutcheon, Theory of Adaptation 8)



Alliterative Revival

An apparently sudden resurgence in the last third of the 14th century of poems written in the native alliterative verse (going back to Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry). Notable poems are the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, William Langland's Piers Plowman, and an anonymous Morte Arthure (ca. 1400). These poems are written in northern and western dialects, rather than in the southern dialects of English which were regaining their social status as the language of the royal court (in competition with French) in London. Under the influence of French poetry, the Anglophone poetry for the London milieu was mainly written in rhyme and in accentual-syllabic meter (Chaucer, Gower). The linguistic and stylistic characteristics of the contemporary alliterative and accentual poetry produced in northern baronial courts seem to correspond to an attitude in both poets and audiences to assert a political and cultural difference with the sites of central and monarchical power in London.


alliterative verse

 Verse in which stressed syllables alliterate (repeat their initial consonants), thus constituting the line's metrical principle:
'Sithe the sege and the assaut was sesed at Troye' (First line of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ca. )
'Sith the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy'

This alliterating pattern is co-substantial to the accentual meter of Old English or Anglo-Saxon poetry and a number of Middle English poems (Layamon's Brut ca. 1190, poems of the so-called "Alliterative Revival")

Animal Studies

An interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals, including how human cultures represent their ideas about animals. Key notions are "animality", the human/animal distinction, "anthropocentrism", "anthropomorphism", "sentience", "specisism", "becoming-animal", among others. This field is also called Human-Animal Studies.

The distinction between humans and nonhuman animals is central to most discussions in Animal Studies. This field challenges the dominant view, originated in the West, that humans have distinguishing and unique traits that nonhuman animals lack, while sharing some features and also behaviours with animals; so that those unique traits gran humans a higher status on ethical, legal and political levels (Calarco 80). Among the supposed unique human traits are:

Questions for an analysis from the perspective of Animal Studies:

Anthropocentrism

In Animal Studies theory: the view that humans are superior to nonhuman animals, that they "are of supreme importance in ethical, political, legal, and existential matters" (Calarco 19)

This view is based on

(Calarco p.19)

Anthropocentric attitudes can be seen in the use of animals for entertainment, in the construction of urban spaces and roadways that disregard and section the habitat of animals, in uses of animals as subjects of works of art or their bodies and byproducts to make works of art (Calarco 19).

Anthropomorphism

The attribution of human form to nonhuman animals.

Animal Studies theorist question whether animal behaviour can be explained "by ascribing a quintessentially human mental experience" to it (Calarco p. 22)

An anthropomorphic view might describe two animals being aggressive to one another as fighting because they are angry. This view cannot be verified becuse "we do not have access to the inner lives of animals" (Calarco p. 22)

A primate might appear to smile and be happy while it may actually be displaying an aggressive stance (Calarco p. 23)



B


Becoming-animal

In Animal Studies, this concept refers to the overlap between human beings and nonhuman animals (Calarco 25). Created by Deleuze and Guattari (1994) as one of the concepts "to resist the dominant social order constituted by unhealthy desires and abominable sufferings".

Bildungsroman

= [novel of formation] "a novel that recounts the development (psychological and sometimes spiritual) of an individual from childhood or adolescence to maturity, to the point that the protagonist recognizes his or her place and role in the world" (Murfin and Ray, Bedford Glossary 39)


C


chivalry

"The knightly system of feudal times with its attendant religious, moral, and social code, usages, and practices" (OED n. 5)
Norton Topic Online page on Ramon Llull and El llibre de l'ordre de la cavalleria (The Book of the Order of Chivalry)



chorus

In ancient Greek tragedies, a group of people who sang or chanted verses while commenting on the action of the play. They "expressed traditional moral, religious, and social attitudes" (Abrams 36). "Roman playwrights such as Seneca took over the chorus from the Greeks, and in the mid-sixteenth century some English dramatists (for example, Norton and Sackville in Gorboduc imitated the Senecan chorus" (Abrams 36). In Elizabethan drama the chorus was mainly impersonated by a single actor, speaking the prologue and epilogue and sometimes "making other explanatory remarks, such as introductions and notes on offstage happenings delivered at the beginning of an act" (Murfin and Ray 59). The chorus may serve as an exposition of the play's subject and setting, or as a summary of events, and it may establish a dialogue within other voices or perspectives in the unfolding of the dramatic action onstage.

conceit

"Originally meaning a concept or image, "conceit" came to be the term for figures of speech which establish a striking parallel, usually ingeniously elaborate, between two very dissimilar things or situations" (Abrams 42) "often in the form of an extended metaphor" (Murfin and Ray 75) (Italian "concetto", Spanish "concepto")

courtly love

In its crudest, sense "courtly love" refers to love relationships among members of the (feudal) court.
A number of social conventions related to love relationships among medieval aristocratic men and women, infused with the lord-vassal loyalties of feudal society and the veneration of the Virgin Mary.
The term used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is "courtesy".
"Whether courtly love was purely a literary convention or whether it ac tually reflected aristocratic practice to any significant extent is still debated" (Murfin and Ray 82) The relationship is often secret, as the lady is usually a married woman. It could involve an adulterous affair or a spiritual (Platonic) and unconsumated love, but it did not lead to marriage. The nobleman or knight expressed a veneration for his lady comparable to that for the Virgin Mary and a loyalty analogous to that to a superior lord. Similarly the lady vowed faithfulness to her lover. They exchanged gifts. He dedicated his military exploits to her, and followed Christian and chivalric codes of behaviour in order to be worthy of her love.
"Courtly love conventions are often traced to the lyrics of the troubadours of eleventh- and tweflth-century Provence (now part of France). Important influences included the Roman Poet Ovid [...]" (Murfin and Ray 81)
"The Roman poet Ovid undoubtedly provided inspiration in the developing concept of courtly love. His Ars amatoria had pictured a lover as the slave of passion, sighing, trembling, growing pale and sleepless, even dying for love. The Ovidian lover's adoration was calculated to win sensual rewards. The courtly lover, however, while displaying the same outward signs of passion, was fired by respect for his lady. That idealistic outlook may be explained partly by contemporary religious devotions, both orthodox and heretical, especially regarding the Virgin Mary, and partly by France's exposure to Islamic mystical philosophy (gained through contacts during the Crusades), which embodied concepts of love 'as a delightful disease, as demanding of faithful service' that were to characterize courtly love." ("courtly love", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 10 Oct. 2015)

critical approach to literature

= A kind or type of literary criticism, that is, a "reflective, attentive consideration and analysis of a literary work" (Murfin & Ray, Bedford Glossary 272). As opposed to literary theory, which involves a reflection upon methods and models, criticism is a practice that entails the application of a general methods and models to specific literary works (Pope, English Studies 76). As opposed to a precritical response, it uses "logical and intellectual analysis", "intelligent application of . . . interpretive techniques", "precise critical language" (Guerin 4-5).

cultural capital

"Cultural capital is what makes you acceptable in your society at the end of the socialization process" (Basnett Constructing 44)

D


discourse

= the use of language in a given situation and context expressing or reflecting the system of social beliefs or ideology of a given group.

= modes of speaking and writing which involve participants in adopting attitudes towards areas of socio-cultural activity (racist, official) [Hatim and Mason]


dystopia

= "A dystopia is usually set at some point in the author's future and describes a nightmarish society in which few would want to live ... alert readers to the potential pitfalls and dangers of society's present course or of a course society might conceivably take one day ... [depict] unpleasant, disastrous, or otherwise terrifying consequences for the protagonists as well as for humanity as a whole" (Murfin & Ray, Bedford Glossary 125)



E



epic

A narrative of the adventures and achievements of a hero of great significance; in a broad sense, "any event involving heroic actions taken in broadly significant situations" (Murfin & Ray 145)

estates satires

A satire of the "estates" in a given society. "Estates" =

Late-medieval examples: John Gower's Mirour de l'Ome (c. 1374–78, in French) and Vox Clamantis (c. 1385, in Latin).




F

 

fabliau (plural fabliaux)

= short comic tale, usually in verse, which flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries (originally in northern France).  Bawdy humour; sexual and scatological subjects; the "trickster tricked" is a common plot ; materialistic view of everyday life. "Though the fabliaux have been accused of antifeminist sentiment, it is interesting to note that, in most instances where such a sentiment is expressed, it is appended to a tale which illustrates female ingenuity and superiority, often over a foolish husband" (Preminger, A.; Harrison, R. L. in Preminger and Brogan 1993).

"Critical opinion in the past has been divided as to whether the fabliaux wre bourgeois or courtly in origin" (Preminger, A.; Harrison, R. L. in Preminger and Brogan 1993)

figurative language

= language that uses figures of speech

Figures of speech = "a literary device involving unusual use of language often to associate or compare distinct things. Figures of speech typically depart from the usual order of words or from their literal meaning to create an image in the reader's mind " (Murfin & Ray 178).
Usually divided into
- "rhetorical figures" (or "schemes", that create an effect without substantially changing the meaning of the word(s))
- and "tropes" (or "figures of thought", that change the literal meaning)
Schemes = e.g. antithesis, apostrophe, chiasmus, parallelism,
Tropes = metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, personification



G


genre  



List of genre terms (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section )



H


hero

(i) the male protagonist (main character) of a story ; (ii) the protagonist of a heroic story

heroic

In history, related to the glorious military achievements of aristocratic warriors. In literature, conventions that tell or show the deeds of aristocratic warriors and rulers, usually in elevated ad dignified mood and style. Heroic values:  loyalty, bravery, prowess, honour, glory



I


ideology

= A cultural system of beliefs and values that govern an individual's or a group's behaviour and thoughts around a given area of life. (Ideology in a broad sense, not necessarily restricted to the social, economic and political, but close to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz's definition of ideology)
See extended gloss
An analysis of ideology entails the analysis of language use through which it is formulated, that is, the analysis of discourse  [van Dijk 1998, 316-7]

image

= "In literature, it .... denotes descriptive terms or figurative language used to produce mental impressions in the mind of the reader as well as the impressions themselves" (Murfin and Ray 236-7)
Images can involve not only sight but also the other senses, and "sensations such as movement and pressure" (236)

E.g.   "My vegetable love" in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" creates the mental impression of love as a slow-growing plant

         "what soft incense hangs upon the boughs ....
          the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."  in John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819)

imagery

= (1) a corpus of images in a text ; (2) "the language used to convey a visual picture (or, most critics would add, to represent any sensory experience); and (3) the use of figurative language, often to express abstract ideas in a vivid and innovative way [making] use of figures of speech such as simile, personification, and metonymy" (Murfin and Ray 238)

interlude

A short play or dramatic entertainment, usually to be performed at the intervals of a longer play or of a banquet. Equivalent to entremés in Catalan and in Spanish, entremet in French, intermezzo in Italian.


M


metre (meter)

A sound patterning in verse lines producing a rhythm in a more or less regular and measurable fashion,

morality play

An allegorical dramatization of an intellectual (doctrinal, moral, political, social) conflict or debate

motif

= a recurrent, unifying element in an artistic work, such as an image, symbol, character type, action, idea, object, or phrase." (Murfin & Ray 315)

mystery play

A dramatization of a biblical episode. Sometimes referred to as "miracle play", which in a broad sense includes plays dramatizing nonbiblical stories. The most important kind of drama in medieval Europe.

N


Neoplatonism

School of thought, from the time of the Roman Imperial Crisis to the Arab conquest, i.e., the middle of the 3rd to the middle of the 7th century (Wildberg)
"One of the central currents of Renaissance thought" (Hooker) -->> influence in Renaissance authors in their versions of Platonic love (Dante, Petrarch, Castiglione, Edmund Spenser).

Main ideas:
— superiority of ideas and mind over matter and reality (the material, visible world); the latter originates from a superior realm of ideas
— reality, in all its cognitive and physical manifestations, depended on a highest principle which is unitary and singular .... a single cause that they considered divine, and indiscriminately referred to as “the First”, “the One”, or “the Good” (Wildberg)
— idea of beauty: "the Absolute (the One, the Infinite being, the source of all value and being) radiates all beauty (and goodness and truth) that exists in this world" (Murfin & Ray 334)
"the material world is a path to the spiritual realm, rather than an obstacle to or diversion from it" (Murfin and Ray 334)

One of the two most important Neoplatonic philosophers is Plotinus, 3rd century AD: synthesis of Greek and Roman thought

During the Renaissance, ancient Greek learning, and Neoplatonism in particular, experienced a dramatic revival in the West ... above all, in the Florentine Platonic Academy, with Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), whose translation and interpretation of Plato and Plotinus (second half of the 15th century) influenced not only the philosophy, but also the art and literature of the period.
Ficino:
- central idea: the human soul is immortal and is the centre of the universe (Hooker)
"All things beneath God are but single things, but the soul can truly be said to be all things . . . For this reason, the soul is called the center of creation and the middle term of all things in the universe, the entirety of the universe, the face of all things, and the binding and joining center of the universe." (quoted in Hooker)
"This special, central position in the universe made humanity the most dignified of all objects in creation; Ficino's emphasis on the dignity of humanity was derived from humanistic currents." (Hooker)
– Platonic love: term coined by Ficino
Idea derived from Ficino's concept that contemplation [of Divine Beauty] is the ultimate goal of human life.
Spiritual or Platonic love is the spiritual relationship in a friendship or love that reproduces the relationship between God and the individual through contemplation (Hooker)
"In other words, when the love and spiritual activity in a friendship mirrors the love for God, then the two individuals have attained the highest type of friendship that they can. Ficino did not condemn sexuality or erotics nor deny that Platonic love was only possible outside sexual relations; his only concern was the nature of the spiritual bond between two people." (Hooker)
"although the lovers' ultimate goal is to apprehend Divine Beauty, they appreciate the bodily beauty of their earthly lover, believing it to signify a higher, more ethereal beauty" (Murfin & Ray 334)
"Today, most people use the phrase Platonic love to refer to love that does not involve sexual relations, without realizing that the term has a much deeper and more complex significance" (Murfin & Ray 384)

More in extended gloss

novel

= "A fictitious prose narrative of considerable length, in which characters are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity" (OED) thus focusing on characterization (Murfin & Ray 343)




P



Petrarchism

direct or indirect imitation of the Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-74), esp. his Canzoniere

"The formal literary style peculiar to or imitated from Petrarch" (OED n.)


Canzoniere : (written 1330-1374) also known as Rime or Rime sparse

A sequence of individual lyrical poems (idea taken from Dante’s Vita Nuova), mostly sonnets, dealing with Petrarch's love for Laura, both when alive and after her death

Laura is "the unobtainable ideal of womanhood" (Wynne-Davies 796)

"Laura is something like an excuse for the poet to observe and analyze the reactions of his own heart. Using introspection to illuminate his earthly and spiritual encounters with Laura, he imparts a melancholy mood to his work" (Hoffmeister p. 97)


Topics:

- poem is a complaint, pain of absence

- lover in despair, tortured, slave to his lady

- love through vision

- lady, coldness.

Catalogue of the lady's features (blason): hair=golden wires; eyes=blue sky, sparkling diamonds; lips=coral; bosom=white snow


Style:

- interest in the elaboration of conceits and comparisons, fondness for word and image play (esp. paradox ‘I am not at peace and my war hath ceased’*; oxymoron ‘icy fire’)


Petrarchan conceit

[conceit : ingenious comparison or extended metaphor > "concepto"]

"an exaggerated portrait of a beautiful, cruel woman and the suffering, lovestricken man who worships her" (Murfin & Ray 379)

"typically employs analogy, hyperbole and oxymoron" (Murfin & Ray 379)

Certain comparison became clichés : e.g. the lover compared to a ship in a stormy sea (Murfin & Ray 379)


Example of a Petarchan conceit in : Spenser's 54th sonnet in Amoretti (1595) 'Of this world's theatre in which we stray' (Murfin & Ray 379)


-metaphors: eyes as windows of the soul; flowers, precious metals as symbols of lady’s beauty; fire as symbol for lust, ice for chastity.


"the term petrarchism gradually grew into a label of abuse to denounce artificiality of expression" (Hoffmeister 98)


anti-Petrarchism : satirical / parodic treatment of Petrarchan conventions (e.g in some of Shakespeare's sonnets, no. 130 "My mistress' eyes ...", or Donne's poetry)



Petrarch, Petrarchism and Neo-Platonism: See extended gloss


Repercussion in Europe:

France: Pleiade; Spain: Boscán, Vega, Cetina, Herrera, Lope, Quevedo, Góngora; Portugal: Camoes.

England: Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare. Wyatt and Surrey partly translated Canzoniere . Revival with Sidney during 1580. Sidney set vogue in 1590: Daniel’s Delia. Spenser’s Amoretti. Shakespeare uses Petrarchist conventions freely (to a young man, themes like procreation, poetic immortality, quarrels over unfaithful mistress, getting old)

John Donne, also influenced by Petrarchism, even in his Holy Sonnets, use of Petrarchan motifs to explore religious themes




R



register

= "A rather imprecise term which describes the kind of language use appropriate to a particular function in a situational context. For example, a legal register or a register of advertisements. Features of language [mainly vocabulary] are selected in accordance with content, purpose, the relation of the language user to an audience, etc." (Carter, Language and Literature 243)
   See ISO terms ;    Wheeler's spectrum of formality

romance

A narrative in which improbable events are involved (in opposition to the realistic events in a novel ).
Medieval romance : chivalric romance : "The main form of European narrative ... often characterized by
(i)a tripartite structure of social integration, followed by disintegration, involving moral tests and often marvelous events, itself the prelude to reintegration in a happy ending, frequently of marriage; and
(ii) aristocratic social milieux" (Greenblatt, Norton Anthology)

"Unlike the epic, a narrative form that exalts the struggles associated with a heroic era of tribal warfare, the romance pertains to a courtly era associated with chivarly. Romances represent the supernatural as characteristic of this world rather than of the gods or their will. They also tend to have what we would be describe as psychological interest or component; the landscapes of romance are often outward manifestations of the hero's or heroine's inner state." (Murfin & Ray 446)


The term originated in references to the narrative written in French (roman) in the 12th century as opposed to literature written in Latin.



S


satire

Satire, artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, parody, caricature, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform. (Elliott, Robert C., "satire" EB)

 

Sentience

"The capacity of an individual organism to sense and feel things and to have subjective experiences of those sensations and feelings." (Calarco 121)

From an ethical perspective, if a nonhuman animal is sentient (is able to experience pain or pleasure in a conscious way), humans should avoid causing suffering to that sentient being, or justify that suffering (Calarco 121)

Specisism

"Unjustified bias against animals based on the purported superiority of the human species" ... "A prejudice that grants ethical consideration only to humans on the basis of species membership" (Calarco 124)

"At the level of what is ethically relevant - subjectivity, sentience, relationships- human beings and animals are sufficiently similar so as to render species-based discrimination unjustifiable" (Calarco 125).

speech act

= the action an utterance performs when uttered, e.g. by uttering "You’ll be more punctual in the future" one can be making a prediction or issuing a command or even a threa (Green, Mitchell, "Speech Acts", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/speech-acts/>)

= "an utterance defined in terms of the intentions of the speaker and the effect it has on the listener" (Crystal 1987, p. 430)


Speech act analysis : "a threefold distinction" (Crystal 1987, p. 120), in the example of "shut the door" (Hatim 1988, p. 178-9).

The illocutionary force may depart from conventional sense.

The illocutionary force and its perlocutionary effect may not coincide: one can warn her interlocutor against something and the interlocutor may or may not heed her warning.

Most acts in everyday conversation are indirect speech acts. In certaing circumstances, using the imperative "shut the door" to ask someone to shut the door may be inappropriate, rude, etc., so other grammatical formulation may have the same illocutinary force (request), such as "I'd be grateful if you could shut the door", "Can you shut the door?", "It's getting cold in here", "Shall we keep out the draught" (Crystal 1987, p. 121).

 




T



theme

= "The statement(s), express or implied, that a text seems to be making about its subject .... the main idea or message [... but ] sometimes applied more broadly to include secondary ideas [...]" (Murfin and Ray 514)
    Theme vs. subject

Theme(s) involve an abstraction from the meaning of actual events, emotions, and characters in order to identify fundamental and universal ideas explored in the text.
Thus, the theme in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is not that the pigs that led the animals' rebellion against their human owner are oppressing the farm animals but  "that power corrupts � and that absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Murfin and Ray 514)




tone

= the attitude or mood of the speaker or voice of the text ; attitude towards the addressee, the subject matter ;  serious/playful/mocking/ tone
Related to atmosphere (which refers to the general feeling created for the addressee and not to the author's particular mood)

 

 


U


utopian fiction

The term utopia refers "a nonexistent good place" (Murfin & Ray, Bedford Glossary  529). It combines both Greek outopia in the senses of "no place" and eutopia in the sense of "good place"

   Some utopias are subtle satires of the society described (S. Butler, Erewhon (1872))

utopian genre =  works of fiction 'which claim truly to describe a community posited at some level as ideal' (Bruce xi)

utopia is a critique of dominant ideology, offering its readers an imaginary or fictive solution to the social contradictions of its own time' (Marin, in Bruce xv)

See also dystopia




Anthology and extended glosses





Ideology [Anthology]

From van Dijk Ideology 1998:

314
"Since [...] there are several types of socially shared beliefs (knowledge, attitude, norms, values, etc.) some of which are not ideological, it is further proposed that ideologies are the general, abstract beliefs that underlie (other) social representations. In that respect, they are like the basic axioms of the system of social representation shared by a group."

"Ideologies are the basic social beliefs of specific groups, but themselves rooted in the general beliefs (knowledge, opinions, values, truth, criteria, etc.) of whole societies or cultures"

"The main cognitive function of ideologies is to organize the social representations of a group. Indirectly, that is, through more specific, domain-relevant, attitude and knowledge they thus monitor social and personal beliefs and ultimately the social practices and discourse based on the later."

315
"Although ideologies may thus also control group knowledge, they especially monitor the shared evaluative beliefs (opinions) of a group. They are the basis of the social judgements of groups and their members."

316
Ideologies "represent group identity and interests, define group cohesion and solidarity, and organize joint actions and interactions that optimally realize group goals."
"ideologies are especially relevant for the management of social group relations, such as those of domination and conflict, but also those of competition and co-operation. It is in this respect that ideologies may function as legitimation of power abuse and inequality, on the one hand, and as a basis for resistance, challenge, dissidence and change on the other hand."

"The effective reproduction and implementation of group ideologies often requires organization and institutionalization, typically so by ideological institutions such as those of politics, the media and education."

"Social group ideologies indirectly (and hence non-deterministically) monitor social practices in general, and discourse in particular, via social beliefs (knowledge, attitudes) and personal beliefs (models)."

"Discourse has a special function in the expression, implementation and especially the reproduction of ideologies, since it is only through language use, discourse or communication (or other semiotic practices) that they can be explicitly formulated" (316-317)

Neo-Platonic love [extended gloss]

"the doctrine of Platonic ... significantly changed the European experience of sexual love which, since antiquity, had always been closely related erotics and physical attraction. ... "sexual love [was then discussed] in terms of spiritual bonds, as reflecting the relationship between the individuals and God." (Hooker)
"Platonic love also gave homosexual erotics a new language. While homosexuality was extremely common in the middle ages, it wasn't really regarded as an identity characteristic, as we do today. When a man had sex with another man, he was a sodomite for as long as the act took place. After that, he was someone who committed sodomy; homosexuality as a steady state did not really exist. The language of Platonic love, however, gave the Italians a language with which to define non-sexual male-male relationships. Once understood in spiritual terms, male-male sexual relationships could now be discussed in the same terms: in the Italian Renaissance, the language of male-male friendship and male-male erotics became the same. This language is still a key element in the modern debates of homosexuality and lesbianism." (Hooker)



Petrarch, Petrarchism [extended gloss]

"Petrarch was inspired by Augustine, the Platonist; and therefore it is not surprising that the Florentine Neoplatonists [Ficino] interpreted Petrarch's Canzionere as a prime example of the successful integration of platonic ideas into a work of art" (Hoffmeister p. 97)


"Apparently Petarch had provided the proper mixture of psychology and melancholy, of love motifs and their integration into nature, of eroticism and platonism" (Hoffmeister p. 97-98)


"Characterstic pyschological analysis of his heart's conflicts between earthly and heavenly love, between Laura as a temptress and a redeemer, and his subsequent rise above this dualism to his mystical vision of Laura as an incarnation of divine virtue." (Hoffmeister p. 97)

Canzionere seen as "An Augustinian progress from unhappy love and the death of earthly beauty to final repentance and celestial beauty" (Hoffmeister p. 97)








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>

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